Amazing Stories v57n04 (1983 11) (Gorgon776)

AMAZINC/FANTASTIC NOVEMBER 1983

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DEPARTMENTS: Opinion: Robert Sliverberg 4

Book Reviews: Frank Catalano & Robert Coulson 8
Otsservatory: Darrell Schweitzer 17
Discussions: The Readers 18

FICTION: Eszterhazy and the Autogondoia-invention:

Avram Davidson 22

Gandy Piays the Palace: M. E. McMullen 74

Traditions: Eric c. Iverson 90

Cyberpunk: Bruce Bethke 94

Homefaring: Robert Sliverberg 1 1 0

FACT: NASA at Twenty-Five: Ben Bova 67

Letters from an SF Editor: Dainis BIsenieks 106

POETRY: Ruth Usa Schechter. p7

CARTOON, CARTOON: William Rotsler & AlexIs aillland, pp 20 a 89

Volume 57, Number 4, (Whole Number 513), November 19S3

AMAZING” Science Fiction stories combined with FANTASTlCStorles. iSSN 0279-6848. is pubiished
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by Robert Silverberg

Somewhat suddenly I found
myself appointed the editor of the
annual Nebula Award anthology of
the Science Fiction Writers of
America a few weeks ago — which
meant I had to choose a selection of
the runners-up for this year’s award
to be included in the book with the
winning stories. Since I’ve been too
busy writing science Action in the
year gone by to have had much time
for reading it, it was necessary for me
to undertake a crash course in the
current Nebula nominees in order to
make my pick of the stories. (I had
read only three of the stories
previously, and one of those was the
one I had written myself.)

As I did my Nebula-nominee
homework, I had the surprising
experience of discovering, as though
for the first time, a datum about as
starding as the announcement that
California is west of New Jersey or
that Thomas Jefferson was President
before Ronald Reagan:

There isn’t a whole lot of science in
science fiction.

What surprises me about this
discovery of mine is that it’s a
criticism that readers have leveled at
SF with great regularity ever since
Hugo Gemsback started Amazing
Stories in 1926, and that it’s a
conclusion I myself came to long ago.
But somehow it struck me with fresh

force this month as I read through,
one after another, the stories that the
members of the Science Fiction
Writers of America (professional
writers of the stuff, remember!)
consider to be worth calling the best
science fiction of the year, a.d. 1982.

I’m not talking, by the way, of the
so-called “hard” science of such SF
practitioners as Hal Clement and
Poul Anderson. (Which is termed
“hard” not because such sciences as
physics and chemistry are generally
thought to be tougher on the brain
than, say sociology or semantics, but
rather because writers of the
Clement-Anderson school believe in
providing a solid theoretical
underpiiming for their fictional
speculations by working out the
specific gravity and orbital period
and such of any planet they might
happen to invent, and to stick
rigorously to the laws of science as
they are presently understood, or, in
deviating from them, to do so in a
plausible and carefully defended
way.) Hard SF is a wondrous thing
when it’s done right, but even its
most loyal adherents will swiftly
agree that it’s not the only legiti-
mate species of science fiction.

No, what I’m talking about is the
absence from much modern-day
science fiction of any sort of
speculative thought whatever. The

4 AMAZING

ideal science fiction story, I have
always believed (and in the main I’ve
tried to honor this principle in my
own work) is one that is built around
the exploration of the consequences
of some extraordinary departure from
the generally accepted realities of
contemporary life. That is, what if
lobsters evolved into intelligent
beings in the future, or what if it
became possible to travel backward
in time, or what if we could restore
the dead to life if it were done
quickly after death; given that bizarre
and fantastic assumption, what would
be likely to happen? I don’t regard
any of those premises as particularly
likely ever to become reality, but
there’s a certain minimal scientific
rationalization that can be made for
each of them, even time travel; the
essence of science fiction for me lies
in the exploration of those
consequences. The careful
exploration of an unlikely idea is, to
me, a playful but legitimate variation
of the true scientific method.

A look at this year’s Nebula
nominees brings some frowns.

Among the novels the situation is less
problematical; the winner, Michael
Bishop’s No Enemy but Time, ought
to fit anybody’s definition of science
fiction, and the same with Aldiss’s
runner-up Helliconia Spring.

Asimov’s Foundation ’s Edge and
Heinlein’s Friday have no significant
speculative content that I could
notice, but in minor details they
certainly attempted, as the work of
those two writers invariably does, to
provide serious thought about the
detail-fabric of the future. Gene
Wolfe’s Sword of the Lictor, though,
seems very far from the purist notion
of SF I’ve propiosed, and Philip K.
Dick’s The Transmigration of
Timothy Archer is a brilliant

mainstream novel with only the
tiniest tinge of any speculative idea in
it.

But many of the shorter works,
splendid as they are as works of
fiction, show vast shortcomings as
science fiction by my way of looking
at things. One, Barry Malzberg’s
supierb “Corridors,” is a story about
what it is to be a science-fiction
writer; call it meta-science-fiction, if
you will, but SF it ain’t. Fritz
Leiber’s “Horrible Imaginings” is a
horror story, all spooks and shivers.
John Kessel’s award-winning
“Another Orphan” is a straight
literary fantasy (“What if a
contemporary Chicagoan suddenly
found himself living inside Moby
Dick?”). Connie Willis’s award-
winning “A Letter from the Clearys”
offers for our contemplation the
astonishing notion that a nuclear war
will greatly upset the workings of our
society, which was a valid theme for
science fiction when Heinlein did it
in 1941, or even when everybody you
can name was doing it in 1946, but
— sorry, Connie — not these days.
Greg Bear’s “Petra” is manic surreal
fantasy. Howard Waldrop’s “God’s
Hooks” is clever quasi-historical
fiction with the merest fantastic
gimmick deep underneath everything
else.

It isn’t all like that, of course.

Bruce Sterling’s “Swarm” is a
brilliantly inventive tour de force of
imaginative biology, William
Gibson’s “Burning Chrome” digs
deep into (among many other things)
some implications of modern com-
puter technology, Joanna Russ’s
magnificent “Souls” drops an
extraterrestrial being down into
medieval Europe with marvelously
stimulating results. And my own
“The Pope of the Chimps” examines

Opinion 5

the philosophical complications that
might grow out of a scientific exper-
iment in developing chimpanzee
intelligence over many generations.

But those are exceptions. It
seemed to me that most of the stories
on the ballot paid only minimal heed
to the old-fashioned notion that a
science-fiction story ought to be built
around a scientific idea (in the
broadest sense of “scientific”) and, to
arrive at some novel and intellec-
tually exciting conclusion in the
course of examining that idea, while
at the same time managing to meet a
reader’s expectations in the matter of
such things as plot, character
development, and literary style.

It isn’t an easy trick to pull off,
God knows. If writers don’t want to
tackle a challenge like that every time
out, I certainly don’t blame them.

I’m not quarreling with Fritz Leiber
for writing a horror story or Barry
Malzberg for writing a story about
science fiction, either. My area of
concern is something else again: if
the members of SFWA — the people
who produce the stuff, remember —
really feel, as their nominations and
votes would suggest, that the stories
on this year’s Nebula ballot represent
what science fiction at its finest ought
to be, then this field may be in even
more trouble than it already seems to
be in. lyi

COMING NEXT ISSUE

The enigmatic Heechee are encountered at last in the third novel of
Frederik Pohl’s Gateway series. Phyllis Eisenstein presents a tale of
feudal rivalry and malign sorcery. Robert Bloch reminisces about the
science-fiction scene of the 1930s in his “Fantastic Adventures with
Amazing. ”

Also in inventory are fine stories by Keith Roberts, Gardner Dozois,
Alan Dean Foster, Wayne Wightman, Somtow Sucharitkul, Darrell
Schweitzer, Robert Young, Ian Watson, Rand B. Lee, and many others!
Watch for the Jack Gaughan cover. And make 1984 an amazing year.

Publisher: Mike Cook Editor: George Scithers
Assistant Editors

Patrick L. Price Darrell Schweitzer John Sevcik
Meg Phillips Dainis BIsenieks Henry Lazarus
John Betancourt

Advertising Coordinator: Mary Parkinson
Production Manager: Marilyn Favaro

6 AMAZING

RECOGNITION OF THE TIGERS

for Jorge Luis Borges

rising out of the looking glass
framed with gold cupids
I saw your Dreamtigers passing, passing
like a pounce of cats

while my incurable addiction bent

like arthritic bones in backfire

of the muse who hypnotized my thoughts

revolving in red light of the azalea bushes

& she smiled with a tentative sparkle

gliding in her long, green gown

& we met in blue light

on the shift key that struck like a wave

locked in the touch system of a typewriter

moving toward ZAZ & TFG

along the left margin of compulsion

underlining the silence of stones

& I fell off the space bar

& crashed into the looking glass

giggling with Alice

& our eyes grew larger in moonlight

& we pledged our dreams

in some Wonderland of bubbles & blossoms

& the muse slammed me back

to the blank page of beginnings

for better or worse

keeping watch on my life

while the tigers in their usual way
passed by that summer
hunting for prey that quivers & cries
along the Hudson River.

— Ruth Lisa Schechter
Recognidon of the Tigers 7

by Frank Catalano

We live in a high-tech world.

Okay, so you’ve heard that before.
But it’s one thing hearing about it
through your Sony Walkman,
between bits of music transmitted via
a relay on an RCA Satcom in geo-
synchronous orbit, broadcast from a
centrally-located programming facil-
ity; and fully another coming face to
face with it.

Which, as I write this, is exactly
what I’m doing.

This is the first of what I expect
will be a long series of columns, short
stories, novels, and the like written on
my home computer . . . something
even I thought I wouldn’t be getting
my hands on for several more
months, if not years. It’s not that I
dislike computers — on the contrary,

I belonged to the first generations
raised knowing that they’d be operat-
ing them. Instead, it came down to
taking what is essentially a science-
fiction technology and putting it to
use in my own life. That, in a way,
frightens me, and if it can take SF
writers aback to use word processors
and computers (some won’t even use
an electric typewriter), imagine how
the average person on the street
would view such a change in his/her
household.

The point here is that people may
be willing to write about dramatic
changes in their lives, or even to read

about them, but rarely actually accept
those changes without taking some
pause.

And in these high-tech times, it
can be all a science-fiction writer can
handle to use the new technologies
and to start thinking ahead to what
type of second- and third-generation
technolc^ies they will spawn.

No wonder there are so many
complaints these days about the lack
of good, accurate, imaginative and
extrapolative hard SF. Dealing with
the SF in reality can be enough of a
problem these days.

Against Infinity
by Gregory Benford
Timescape; $14.95 (cloth)

I bring all this up because of what
appears to be the difficult state of
writing an entertaining as well as
scientifically imaginative hard SF
novel. And one of the few who
appears to be doing it well is Gregory
Benford.

Benford had a hell of a task in writ-
ing Against Infinity, one I don’t think
anyone envies him in the literary
sense — following up an award-
winning novel that even spawned a
namesake line of books. That novel,
of course, was Timescape. In Time-
scape, Benford describes a failing
near-future Earth with an easy reality
that makes for entertaining hard SF.

8 AMAZING

TY/O POSSIBLE FUTURES BAHLE FOR EXISTENCE IN OUR PRESENT.

IF THE WRONG SIDE WINS. THE THIRD REICH WILL NEVER DIE...

“Fred Sabertiagen has always been one
of the best writers in the business.”
Stephen R. Donaldson,

author of
THE ONE TREE

TOR BOOKS

:WE'RE PART OF THE FUTURE

The same kind of easy reality
app)ears in Against Infinity, even
though it takes the reader millions of
miles and hundreds of years into
Man’s future. This time, the subject
is Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, where
Man is trying to gain a foothold.
Terraforming is working, but very
slowly; and it will take generations for
genetically-engineered critters that
Man has put there to do the job and
make the planet habitable for
humans.

Into all of this comes 13-year-old
Manuel Lopez, a first-generation
native of Sidon Settlement on Gany-
mede. The Settlement is just barely
eking out an existence while compet-
ing with asteroid colonies and the
strict, socialist government on Earth,
which appears to have lost the con-
cept of what it means to be on the
frontier. And then there are the alien
artifacts, discovered on Jupiter’s
moons years ago. They’re truly alien
in that they aren’t understood, or
perhaps aren’t even understandable,
by humans.

Foremost among the artifacts is
one that appears to be the oldest of
them. The colonists on Ganymede
have nicknamed it the Aleph — and
it alone of the artifaas still functions,
if you can call apparent mindless ter-
rorizing of the Ganymede “country-
side” functioning. The settlers, on
missions to weed the genetically-
engineered terraforming creatures
of malfunctioning animals, go on fre-
quent side trips to hunt the huge
artifaa which tunnels and crosses
Ganymede, seemingly at random.

And the one who finally wants to
meet up with the Aleph is Manuel.

Against Infinity is very much a Rite
of Passage story for Manuel, and a
good one at that, interweaving the
strange-yet-familiar characteristics of

a world Man is trying to make over to
suit him with the definite alienness of
the Aleph and the definite familiarity
of a boy growing up. And it works.
It’s a completely different situation
than Timescape, but in terms of scope
and impact, it’s a worthy successor.
Those who read the serialization in
Amazing should know that the book
is substantially longer.

The Unforsaken Hiero

by Sterling E. Lanier
DelRey: $1 1.95 (cloth)

Where Against Infinity struck me
with the strong characterization of its
lead player. The Unforsaken Hiero
struck me just as hard by the appar-
ent lack of it.

The Unforsaken Hiero continues the
tale of Per Hiero Desteen, priest and
trained killer of the Metz Republic, a
country comprising part of what used
to be Canada. In the first book, Hie-
ro’ s Journey, Lanier introduced Des-
teen and the Republic’s search for a
computer which was needed to help
fight the Unclean, a Dark Brother-
hood which used technology for
domination.

This background is quickly
recapped at the beginning. Now, it
seems, the Unclean are even more of
a menace — and Hiero has to work
with the Republic and some rather
odd allies to defeat them once and for
all.

Now, I didn’t tczd Hiero’ s Journey
when it first came out a decade ago,
and still haven’t read it. It’s to
Lanier’s credit that its sequel holds
up very well on its own. It’s also to
his credit that he takes the conflict
between the Unclean and the Metz
Republic to a decisive [>oint, and that
he also brings the doings of uniquely
mutant animal intelligences into the
story.

10 AMAZING

But the characters are straight from
a comic book, right down to their dia-
logue and internal thought — you
know, the dastardly villains, the noble
hero, the brave and gorgeous wife.

It’s irritating to read that kind of
thing when it’s put against a back-
ground of North America some 5,000
years after a holocaust . . . it’s like
pink flamingos on the lawn at
Winchester Cathedral.

Whatever. It is a pretty decent
quest novel, save for that. And don’t
expect it to be the last Hiero novel:
the ending is straightforward about
Hiero having not finished his work
. . . and apparently that means Lanier
hasn’t, either.

For Love of Mother-Not

by Alan Dean Foster
Del Rey: $2.95 (paper)

For Love of Mother-Not is a prequel
to the several volumes Foster has
written involving the empath Flinx
and the mini-dragon Pip. In this one,
we find out early on that Flinx was an
orphan sold at government auction to
sweet-but-crusty Mother Mastiff, a
street dealer on a not-so-advanced
planet. Flinx himself is an orphan of
science, so to speak. He’s part of an
illegal scientific society’s experiments
in genetic engineering. When that
society tries to get his cooperation by
kidnapping Mother Mastiff, Flinx
I ries to find her and to find out about
himself.

1 suppose this book would be fas-
cinating to devoted fans of the Flinx-
rip Commonwealth adventures, but I
don’t think I belong in that category.

I n the first place, I had a hard time
believing the premise that an other-
wise enlightened government body
like the Commonwealth would ban
outright all genetic experimentation,
riie “villainous” scientists seem

rather pathetic, aaually; and I found
myself sympathizing with them in
several instances. In addition, some
of the background is of the dreaded
“As You Well Know” style, where
one character explains background to
the other in large hard-to-swallow
lumps, solely for the reader’s benefit
since the characters obviously already
know all of this. If that’s the case,
why are they telling it to each other?

For Love of Mother-Not is not one
of Foster’s best efforts. It reads like
the introduction of an unfinished
novel, since the really fascinating
implications are at the end of the
book. But then, those apparently have
already been covered in the other
Commonwealth novels.

The War Against The Chtorr
Volume 1: A Matter for Men

by David Gerrold
Timescape: $15.95 (cloth)

Aliens invade Earth. Pretty stan-
dard stuff, right?

Not in David Gerrold’s latest book.
It’s not quite as simple to invade ol’
Terra as it used to be.

First of all, you have to be able to
sneak up on the populace . . . best
done in such a way that they don’t
even know they’re being invaded.

And tie it in to a series of disasters
that seem to be natural.

In this case, the Earth is one in a
relatively near future some years after
a limited nuclear exchange
nicknamed the Ajxicalypse resulted in
the Moscow Treaties, treaties that left
the United States without the right to
have its own global armed presence.
This was followed by some inexplica-
ble plagues that wiped out most of
the Earth’s population . . . and by
rumors of the invading alien Chtorr,
rumors some saw as a way to rally the
remaining populace of the U.S.

Book Reviews 1 1

against a mythical foe to get things
back together.

But Jim McCarthy, a scientist who
was drafted into the new Teamwork
Army, finds out the Chtorr aren’t a
myth. He also finds the Chtorr are
invading . . . but doing so by slowly
introducing the organisms native to
Chtorr to soften up Earth for the
Chtorrans.

It’s a stridently written novel. De-
scribing it as Heinleinesque would be
pretty close to the mark, since it’s got
a lot of action and science and clearly
defined situations of right and wrong.
It also moves very quickly for its
nearly 400 pages, and the idea of an
ecological invasion is very well
carried off.

However, the novel is also very
episodic in nature — you get a great
feel for the individual scenes, but the
entire picture of how it all fits
together is a bit choppy. By the time
I got to the end of it, I was impressed
by its flash and punch; and then I
wondered what I’d read. It appears to
be the story of McCarthy’s Rite of
Passage and the growing Chtorran
invasion, but comes across more like
a “Let’s examine future U.S. political
philosophy” tour, complete with lots
of neat lectures by characters in the
know, albeit they’re delivered in
entertaining style.

The first volume of The War
Af^ainst The Chtorr just misses the
mark of being a really good book, and
I’m not sure exaaly why. Perhaps
it needs more Gerrold and less Hein-
lein. But three more books in this set
are promised, and I am looking for-
ward to the next one.

Dream Makers Volume II

by Charles Platt
Berkley; S6.95 (trade)

Dream Makers Volume II is sub-

titled “The Uncommon Men and
Women Who Write Science Fiction,”
and it couldn’t be more on the mark.
Because while all these people may be
involved with SF, they are as diverse
personalities as their fiction is differ-
ent from each other’s.

Platt presents some excellent prose
profiles of 28 SF writers, editors, and
writers who have only dabbled in SF
in some peripheral way (such as Alvin
Toffler, author of Future Shock). The
profiles include not just the text por-
tions of conversations Platt had with
the writers and editors, but also
Platt’s own observations — and
biases — flatly stated up front. Brief
and very descriptive, they look at the
people who write and edit what you
and I read, and occasionally review.

Best of all about the profiles is that
you get the feeling that you really
know the person Platt has talked
with. I’m not sure if all the interviews
measure up the same way, but com-
paring the ones written about people
I know against the people themselves,
they’re right on. It’s a nice thing, see-
ing the writers and editors as human
beings, and not as some godlike
beings who deign to entertain and
enlighten us with prose. It’s even
kind of refreshing to realize that some
of the writers are downright weird.

I’d be hard-pressed to pick out the
best, but the really illuminating ones
included the interviews with Jerry
Poumelle, Andre Nonon, James Tip-
tree, Jr., Keith Laumer, L. Ron
Hubbard (no, not in person — that’s
explained), Harry Harrison, Chris-
topher Priest . . . what the heck.
They’re all good. If you’re a reader
who wants to know more about the
writers you read, or simply a writer
or editor who wants to know more
about your craft or colleagues, I
recommend this book highly.

12 AMAZING

by Robert Coulson

Code of the Lifemaker

by James P. Hogan

Del Rey, SI 3.95 (hardcover)

This book is thoroughly fascinating
and amusing. In the prologue,

Hogan provides a straightfaced and
amusingly logical account of how a
group of manufaauring robots,
abandoned by their alien masters,
develop individuality, sex, and a
primitive society including warfare.

In the main part of the novel, this
unusual group is contacted by a
human space mission. The major
human character is a successful and
cynical professional “psychic,” who is
along for political rather than scien-
tific reasons. A rival group has sent a
magician along to keep an eye on him
and debunk any psychic demonstra-
tions, but when it is revealed that the
mission’s scientific work is merely a
cover for the true purpose of exploit-
ing the robots, the two join forces in
opposition. There follows intrigue,
culminating in the psychic inadver-
tently becoming the robots’ Messiah.

The technical material is well done,
including the details of how psychics
operate, and the book contains a half-
dozen or more vivid characters. Osn-
sider it for a Hugo next year.

Lyonesse

by Jack Vance

Berkley, $6.95 (paperback)

I found this one disappointing,
primarily because I’m an admirer of
Vance’s exotic backgrounds and his
strange & original depictions of
humanity’s basic drives. Here the set-
ting is typical for soft fantasy: a group

of islands (no longer in existence, of
course) somewhere in what is now the
Celtic Sea. (The map in the book
shows parts of England, Ireland, and
France, but they’re distorted enough
that exact location of the islands is
impossible.)

Plot is the intrigues of petty kings,
which is typical enough of Vance, but
the charaaers are eminently forget-
table, and the heroine is insipid. I
was set to blast the cover artist for
showing such a saccharine and stupid
maid, but it’s actually a very good
representation. The plot itself is well
done, and it’s a superior effort when
compared to the average swords-and-
sorcery novel. But it’s a long way
from Vance’s best effort.

Ratha’s Creature
by Clare Bell

Atheneum, $11.95 (hardcover)

The background of an intelligent
race of big cats on the Earth of
twenty-five million years ago
stretches my credulity past the break-
ing point. But the characters and plot
woven into this background are
excellent.

The “Named” are very much cats
with a tribal social structure and
herder culture: they’re not furry
humans. Their herds are being raided
by their “Un-Named” relatives, who
are savages with a mixture of intelli-
gence and normal cat instincts; the
intelligent “Un-Named” seem in the
minority.

Ratha is an equivalent of a female
teenager, and the plot concerns her
attempts to get the Named to use her

Book Reviews 13

unorthodox ideas of defense. In the
course of the book she matures, saves
the tribe (naturally), and learns that
you can’t always have all you want.

It’s an excellent juvenile book and
a must for cat-lovers.

Tea With The Black Dragon

by R. A. MacAvoy
Bantam, $2.75 (paperback)

Basically this is a suspense plot,
with kidnappings, computer theft,
attempted murder, etc. The only fan-
tasy element is that the hero is over a
thousand years old and a former
dragon. (He looks human, a [mint
which is explained in the conclusion.)

The characters, both the dragon
and the heroine, are marvelous. She’s
a former concert violinist who is now
a fiddler with a folk group (to the
despair of her daughter, who feels
that status and prestige should out-
weigh fun and games). The plot is
merely a device to let the reader get
to know the characters, and they’re
well worth knowing; the hero in par-
ticular is one of the most charming
superhumans I’ve ever encountered.

Pauline Ellison did an equally mar-
velous job on the cover; I’d love to
have the original of that one. The
book may be hard to find by the time
this review appears, but it’s worth
looking for.

The Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction and Fantasy: Vol. 3
Compiled by Donald H. Tuck
AdventiPublishers, $25.00
(hardcover)

The final volume of one of the
major science-fiction reference works.
Previous volumes were composed of
bio-bibliographies of SF and fantasy
authors, editors, artists, etc. This is
the miscellaneous volume and
includes lists of all the science-fiction

and fantasy magazines, complete to
listing the lead story in each issue, a
list of paperbacks arranged in sections
by author, publisher, and title, a
compiendium of known pseudonyms,
a list of series and connected stories,
and a final general coverage which
includes films, TV, selected fanzines,
foreign SF, etc. Advent is known for
its accuracy, so the science-fiction
coverage can be relied on. Coverage
of jjeripheral areas may not be as
good: Juanita discovered several
errors in the “Star Trek’’ plot syn-
opses. But even there it should be
generally reliable. Cutoff date for the
material presented is 1968.

Okay, fellas; now when are you
going to publish the update, bringing
the material up to 1980 or so?

Othergates 1983

edited by Millea Kenin

Unique Graphics, 1025 55th Street,

Oakland CA 94608,

$7.00 (paperback)

This is for all you would-be writers
and artists in the readership. This
200-page book, the fourth annual edi-
tion, lists all the science-fiction
markets, or at least all that responded
to the editor’s questionnaire. Profes-
sional, semi-pro, and fanzines are all
represented, with addresses, publish-
ing frequency, types of material used,
and rates of payment if any. There
are cross-references according to cir-
culation size, pay rates, and type of
material. It’s far more comprehensive
than anything else I’ve seen, and
should go on your reference shelf
next to the writer’s manuals, since it
shows what you can do with the stuff
after it’s written.

Compounded Interests

by Mack Reynolds

Nesfa Press, $15.00 (hardcover)

14 AMAZING

Another of Nesfa’s books to honor
the Boskone convention’s Guest of
Honor. This collection includes ten
stories originally published from 1951
to 1%7, one new story, a short verse,
and an introduction by the author. A
good share of the stories are humor-
ous, all of them entertaining. Rey-
nolds has been largely ignored by the
critics, but tends to rank high in
readers’ polls.

The best item in the book is
“Depression or Bust,” a nicely funny
illustration of the adage, “The only
thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Other stories include a deal with the
Devil, the ultimate Indian claim,
a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, alien
contact, and others. The title story
concerns the pHjssibilities of making a
fortune via time travel; the kicker is
what that fortune might be used for.
Wendy Pini has a nice dust-jacket.

Nebula Maker & Four

Encounters

by Olaf Stapledon

Dodd, Mead, $14.95 (hardcover),

S7.95 (paperback)

As I’m not much of a Stapledon
fan, I was surprised to learn from
Arthur C. Clarke’s introduction that
his career ran from about World War
I to World War II. I would have
guessed from the style that he came
somewhere in between the Franco-
Prussian and Boer Wars: it’s a very
ponderous, 19th-century type of
writing.

“Nebula Maker” is apparently an
early version of Star Maker, which I
didn’t like, either. The idea of intelli-
gent interstellar nebulae is interesting
and original enough, but the analogy
of their history to that of humanity is
simplistic and occasionally dead
wrong, not to mention dull as
ditchwater.

“Four Encounters” is much more
interesting, though not fantasy at all.
In it, Stapledon explores the philo-
sophy of, in turn, a Christian, a
scientist, a mystic, and a revolution-
ary, and finds them all lacking. (The
idea that a Christian can also be a
scientist, or that a mystic can also be
a revolutionary, is ignored for the
purpose of the debate.) In my
assumed and erroneous time-frame
for Stapledon, these might have been
considered innovative and original;
since they were actually written in the
1940s, they’re a bit dated but still
interesting, and still at least partially
valid.

So, roughly half the book is well
worth reading. Tell your librarian to
get a copy.

Ancient Lights

by Davis Grubb
Viking, $10.95 (paperback)

This 540-page book came out in
1982, but nobody seems to have paid
much attention to it, and it’s worthy
of attention. The plot concerns the
new Messiah, Sweeley Leech, and his
unorthodox — to put it mildly —
methods of salvation; it’s narrated by
his nymphomaniac and garrulous
daughter Fifi; and it takes place
mostly in 1992.

The theme seems to be that God is
Love, reduced to the lowest common
denominator. Actually the sex is
overdone; it got boring before I was a
quarter of the way into the book,
which I don’t think was the author’s
intent.

However, the use of the language is
marvelous; this is a book to be quoted
at people. Some of the expressions,
inventions, and puns cry out to be
shared:

Describing murals of dancers:
“They gave me a sense of Degas vu.”

Book Reviews 15

“A fat bulldog, wheezing and
strumming on his catarrh . .

Describing Irish fairies: . .
angels with Deirdre faces.”

Night scene: “The black Ohio
River shone and shimmered and
wound like a dark, sullen torrent of
Coca-Cola sewering into the rotting
teeth of little children . .

All of the above are samples from
the first quarter of the book; there are
lots more, all the way through; and
there’s no room to quote all the pas-
sages I marked. The book is a bawdy
extravaganza, with unbelievable
charaaers, improbable events, and
brilliant dialog and descriptions. I
had to buy my own copy, and it was
well worth the money.

Whispers IV

edited by Stuart David Schiff
Doubleday, $1 1.95 (hardcover)

This collection of horror stories is
almost entirely of original fiction,
rather than reprints from the maga-
zine. I’m not a good judge of horror
stories because they don’t horrify me,
but most of these actually have plots
and some of them have interesting
characters as well. One or two even
have conclusions that surprised me,
though most were pretty predictable
to the veteran reader.

Karl Edward Wagner, Russell
Kirk, and David Drake all have
above-average fiction here, well
worth your while. The other stories,
good enough but not outstanding, are
by Freff, Ramsey Campbell, Tanith
Lee, Frances Garfield, Gerald W.
Page, William F. Nolan, Charles L.
Grant, Lawrence Treat, Frank Bel-

knap Long, Stephen Kleinhen, Hugh
B. Cave, Richard Christian Mathe-
son, and Michael Shea. This anthol-
ogy has a nice mixture of new writers
and veterans.

Patterns of the Fantastic
edited by Donald M. Hassler
Starmont, S5.95 (paperback)

Subtitled “Academic Programming
at Chicon IV.” For those of you who
fell asleep during the presentations,
this includes a selected list of the
papers that were read. The use of
language and the utopian genre are
the most popular subjects, though
they also cover women writers and
characters, science-fiction theater,
some individual writers, and one
article on fannish convention-goers.
Most of the book is competent if
stodgy; none of it is particularly
engrossing to me, but if you like that
sort of thing it’s a nice souvenir of the
convention.

The Best of Chicon IV

Off Centaur Publications,

P.O. Box 424, El Cerrito CA 94530,
$8.00 (tap)e)

This 60-minute cassette recording
of excerpts from the filksing is a
pleasanter souvenir of Chicon IV for
me, but then I’m a noted lowbrow. It
includes sixteen songs by fourteen
different singers; Leslie Fish and
Julia Ecklar are each represented
twice. Some, like Frank Hayes’s “12
Years At A Worldcon” are exces-
sively ingroup; most are under-
standable to anyone with an interest
in science fiction.

16 AMAZING

by Darrell Schweitzer

Why isn’t science fiction more
international? While translations were
common in the science-fiction maga-
zines in Hugo Gemsback’s day, in
recent years it has been fiossible to
get the impression that, aside from a
handful of Britons and Australians,
the only noteworthy foreign science-
fiction writers are two or three Rus-
sians and a Pole. We need only to
read some of the classics of foreign
SF, such as Zamyatin’s We (1924) or
Capiek’s The War with the Newts
(1937) or such an anthology as
Donald Wollheim’s The Best from the
Rest of the World to realize that this
isn’t so.

But very few foreign writers are to
be found in American science-fiction
magazines. Why?

One partial explanation is that
some magazines have foreign edi-
tions, and therefore can’t use work
which has been previously published
elsewhere. Amazing doesn’t. We buy
only first North American serial
rights.

The main reason is much simpler:
the stories are not being submitted.

Translation is of course a problem.
All stories must be in English. This
isn’t mere American chauvinism, but
because a story that has to be trans-
lated is more expensive to acquire,
and, if the editor doesn’t even know
(until she r6ads the translation)
whether the story is any good, the

expense is unjustified. Also, while she
may be able to read German, French,
and Spanish perfectly, this won’t do
her any good if the story is in
Swedish.

Distance and postage are more of a
nuisance than a problem. We recom-
mend that overseas writers send clear
photocopies which may be disposed
of if not bought, and enclose just
enough International Reply Coupons
for an airmail reply. The reply may
take longer to reach you, but other-
wise your manuscript will be treated
like any other.

Some foreign writers, even from
English-speaking countries, seem to
believe that American editors are not
interested in their work, and will
rejea stories lacking sufficient Amer-
ican content. The very reverse is true.
If a story has a foreign setting, for-
eign characters, or even just a differ-
ent way of looking at things, it will
seem fresh and new, even if it might
be commonplace to the author’s
countrymen. Sometimes American
writers attempt stories set abroad, or
featuring non- American charaaers.
They may or may not know what
they’re talking about. The non-
American writer does, and if he can
also tell a good story, he has a pKtsi-
tive advantage.

We definitely want to see more sto-
ries from non-American writers.

Observatory 17

by The Readers

Dear Mr. Scithers:

I’d be curious to know just how
aware Gregory Benford was that he
was recasting Faulkner’s The Bear in
Against Infinity. Recasting it
effectively and cleverly, needless to
say; but the parallels are hard to
miss. Manuel is Ike, Old Matt is Sam
Fathers, Eagle is Lion, the Aleph is
Old Ben, etc., etc. My guess is that at
some {mint — not necessarily from
the outset — he was perfectly aware
of all this; but could we ask him?

Yours,

Judith Moffett
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Pennsylvania

Dear George:

Judith Moffett is correct, as far as
she goes. I grew up a hundred miles
from Faulkner’s home, and set out to
write an SF novel that drew on what
I thought of as the basic hunting
story I’d heard as a boy. I grew up
among farmers for whom baying
hounds and the pursuit of deer and
fox and even the occasional bear was
the recreation.

The point of carrying over such
experience is that I suspect humans
have only a few organizing principles,
and one as effective as hunting will
undoubtedly arise again. I began the
book, desiring to create a sequel to

my own Jupiter Project', and indeed
Matt Bohles of that novel becomes
the old man of Against Infinity. The
more I thought about Ganymede 200
years from now, the more it seemed
that the emotional context of hunting
was what I needed to tell the tale.

So I started off in what I knew as a
boy to be the southern story-telling
voice — long sentences, rolling
rhythms, personal asides, etc. Many
literary critics regard this as
Faulkner’s voice, but he got it from
the people around him. (And of
course changed it some, too; so did
I.) As I consciously realized the
convergence of ideas and methods, I
reread The Bear, and yes, there’s a
similarity — in part.

However, the analogy fails in the
second half of the novel, which of
course wasn’t serialized in Amazing.
There I consciously draw back from
the frontier, and have a look at some
ideas far from the Faulknerian forest
— Heilbroner’s theories about the
evolution of socialism, for one.

And through it all I stuck close to
scientific facts, trying to envision
how Ganymede would be
terraformed by advanced technology,
and what kind of men and women
would do the dog work. My family
was and is mostly laborers and
farmers, and that gives you a
different perspective on society than

18 AMAZING

the customary middle-class
intellectual view of most sf writers.

As for the implications of why the
men and boys of Against Infinity
ceaselessly tracked down a lumbering
alien artifact — a careful reading of
the last few chapters, and especially
the last page, may be of help. By that
time we’re far from the southern
context, of course. Or maybe not.

Best,

Gregory Benford
UC - Irvine CA

It ’s all a matter of relationship —
whether the other writer is a literary
father or brother. Or uncle, or maybe
even first cousin once removed. . . .

— George H. Scithers

Dear Mr. Scithers:

Enclosed is $16 for a two-year
renewal of my subscription. Also,
this seems as good a time as any to
express my thoughts on Amazir^’^
change. (I know I’m a bit late, but
procrastination is one of my many
foibles.)

After reading SF/Fantasy lightly
for two or three years, I started
reading Ms. Mayor’s Amazing.
Almost immediately (Jan ’81), I
subscribed and became a great fan of
the magazine. Amazing developed my
tastes for SF and turned me into an
avid SF/Fantasy reader. (The
occasional mystery/horror helps to
balance my readings.)

After my first subscription ran out,
I renewed. The first issue of my
second run with Amazing arrived
(the Sep ’82 ish); it announced the
change of control. Immediate shock
and panic set in: the magazine that
introduced me to magazine SF would
undergo the metamorphosis of a new
editor, staff, and publisher. By this
time, I had already started reading

other SF magazines. I had also
learned Amazing was not the leader
as it always will be to me. I decided
to wait and see.

I waited, and was pleasantly
surprised. I enjoyed (on the whole)
all of the issues printed, but it wasn’t
as good.

I like the “artistic” old type style.
The November cover was fine, but
the rest weren’t quite as good as the
old ones. And (I know this will sound
picky) the bindings (due to the way I
store back issues, these are
prominent) lack a bit of the old ones’
color. (Also the color of the other SF
magazines I read.)

Pardon me if this letters sounds
critical, or ignorant of faas in
magazine SF. But hey. I’m just a
high school sophomore who’s only
been reading SF/Fantasy for four
years or so.

John Provo
1414 Stafford Avenue
Fredericksburg VA 22401

This letter doesn't sound at all
ignorant to us; after all, you are an
all-important part of our readership.
You’re right about the bindings (or
spines) beirtg less colorful than they
were; that we can easily fix, and will.

As far as Amazing being the leader
in the field — if it is to you, then it is
to us. IVe think we 're delivering on our
slogan: First in Science Fiction
— again!

— George H. Scithers

Hallowed Editors,

My eyes are red, my fingers ache,
my hair lies about in great torn-out
locks. The dictionary has vanished in
the thick blue clouds of cigarette
smoke obscuring my room: my
ashtray ruimeth over. I dare not go
swimming for fear that writer’s

Discussions 19

Yours very truly,

cramp will be my undoing. My
shining ideas shrivel horribly as soon
as they encounter the daemons Style,
Charaaerization, and Plot.

Enough! My ego can take no more.
I humbly request a copy of
Constructing Scientifiction & Fantasy.
It is unfair that I have not the
courage to submit my stories for fear
of Sturgeon’s Law.

Perhaps with enough blood, sweat
and tears (and a format for manu-
script submission breathing down my
neck) I might yet see my stories in
***PRINT*** and my bank account
rise above two digits.

It sure would be nice to be able to
afford to date my girlfriend again.

Mark Soula
c/o J.&J. Owen
R.R. #2
Emo, Ontario, Canada

Our booklet — which over a
thousand readers have requested —
contains some useful do ’s and don’t ’s.
But we don ’t think it will promptly set
your mind at ease. What you describe
sounds like an argument with your b. s.
detector. (Hemingway thought every
writer needed one.) Only once you
make friends with the li’l devil will you
be past your growing pains.

— George H. Scithers

20 AMAZING

..Not KNOWING BUT PRCI6RAMEP TO PURCHASE.

From TSR Hobbles, Inc. Producers ot the
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® game phenom-
enon.

For your FREE poster/catalog complete this
cou^n and send it to:

The following is a fantasy; but it is also true science fiction:
it is about change. Its country is not to be found on any
map. It has been replaced, at best, by a Federal People’s
Republic: and how is that a change for the better? You
would be wrong to find its characters merely laughable. We
know what history is going to overtake them and their
children: a good reason for setting a tale in the not terribly
distant past.

T ales of an older and magisterial Eszterhazy appeared in
magazines (irwlnding Fantastic^ a decade back and were
collected as The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy
(Warner, 1975) — now, alas, out of print.

The mist was thick and white and wet, and from every side came the
sounds of trickling waters. Huge grey rocks loomed, showed their lichen-
ous and glistening contours, fell behind to be succeeded by impossibly
steep vistas where tufts of grass and twisted trees lured the stranger on,
perhaps only (the stranger thought) to betray him into placing his foot on
a narrow and slippery footing whence he would at once plunge into a
gorge. From right behind him a voice spoke. “You all right. Lieutenant?”
said the voice.

Captain Skimmelffenikk of the Royal and Imperial Scythian-
Pannonian-Transbalkanian Excise swore a bit. “How can anybody be all
right who tries to climb a saturated mountain in riding-boots?” he asked,
next.

He could not see the sergeant, but he was certain that the sergeant
shrugged. The sergeant said, “You ought to wear rope-soled sandals, like
the rest of us. Ain’t that right, Mommed?” The guide was up ahead and
equally invisible; he was a Mountain Tartar and a Rural Constable. His
reply was a grunt. That is, it sounded like a grunt to the lieutenant, but to
the sergeant it had sounded like more. “Hey, that’s a good idea,” said he.
“Stop a bit, sir. Now grab hold of that tree and hold it for balance. Now
stick your leg backwards as if you was a mule and I was a-shoeing you.
Right leg first.” It was a mad-sounding instruction, but no madder than
anything else on this tour of duty; and the officer had no one but himself
to blame as it was his own misconduct (sleeping off his annual hangover in
a public place) which had brought him here as punishment — and lucky
he hadn’t been cashiered! — here at the wild border of Hyperborea, one
of the Confederated Hegemonies of the Empire. Holding onto the moist
bole of a tree, he stuck his right leg backwards. The Royal and Imperial
Excise was stern. But it was just. He, Lt. Skimmelffenikk, would sweat
and suffer and do his damnedest to do his duty, and eventually he would
find himself in some civilized jurisdiction again . . . the Scythian Gothic

24 AMAZING

Lowlands, perhaps ... or near the capital city of Avar-Ister, sometimes
called “The Paris of the Balkans” (not often), in the broad plain of
Pannonia.

Twisting his head, he looked to see what was being done. It would not
have surprised him to see that his sergeant was aaually preparing to
hammer in an iron mule-shoe: not quite: the man produced an immense
clasp-knife from which he now unclasped a something for which the
tax-officer knew no name: somewhat like an awl and somewhat like a file
and, on one edge, somewhat like a saw; and with this the man proceeded
to score deep scratches in the soles of his superior’s boots. “All right, sir,
now the left leg if you please. Aw haw haw! well, better put the right one
down first, aw haw haw! Sir.”

But his superior was not looking at his feet. His superior was now
looking straight in front of him at a slightly upward angle and at undoubt-
edly the most horrible sight he had ever seen in his life; he was looking at a
face in the thicket and this face was diabolical. One side of it was
bleach-white, one side of it was jet-black; it had yellow eyes and horns and
a wreathed crown and a stinking beard, and it writhed its lips and it
sneered as though the next moment it were about to pronounce some
dreadful malediction. The exciseman uttered a thin wail and desperately
tried to remember a prayer. At once the sergeant appeared alongside and
lunged towards the frightful face, hand outstretched. The creature issued
a fearful cry. Vanished. A commotion in the thicket. Only the wreathed
crown remained. Or . . . was it really a wreath? Or merely a mass of
flowering tendrils, adventitiously created as the creature had blundered
through the bushes? A sudden small wind blew upon the wreath and it
went tumbling out of sight. Meanwhile, in the wake of the commotion,
there fell at the exciseman’s feet some bits of earth and grass and some
other objects, dark and about the size of chick-peas and smoking faintly in
the cool misty air. “What was it?” he asked.

“Why sir, it was what the usual trouble here is about, a great big billy
such as the Hypoes don’t want to pay no tax upon it if they can help it . . .
there being no tax on a nanny, as you know, sir.”

The lieutenant had some faults in character. But he was able to confess
them. “I was scared as Hell. I thought it was the Devil’s face,” he said,
now.

And then he said, “Hark. What is that?” The two strained their ears.
“Shepherds’ pipes?” the officer asked. But his man shook his head. No. It
was far too high for shepherds, he said. Nor did they pipe so.

Unlike most excisemen, who seldom read anything except second- or
third-hand copies of the so-called “French papers,” Skimmelffenikk was
fond of the occasional issue of a monthly which sometimes carried articles
about Natural History; he recalled one now about certain “honey-comb”
rocks through which the winds sometimes blew with an effect like an

Eszterhazy-Autogondola 25

aeolian harp, and he now mentioned this to his sergeant.

Who said: “Huh. Well, it might have been.” They moved on. Slowly.
The rough-cut soles, now both scored, gripped better. “Them Hypoes,”
the sergeant was a Slovatchko and held the Hyperboreans in great con-
tempt, “Well, it is said they sometimes do worship the Devil, ho, such
fools! Don’t they, Mommed? — Oh, not you o’course for all you’re a
Tartar and so a kissing-cousin to a Turk; but they others, don’t they be
sometimes risking their souls by worshiping the devil?”

The Mountain Tartar’s reply may have been of a theological nature and
then again it may not. Whatever it was he meant by saying it, he said it
over and over again. “Watch step. Watch step. Watch step.”

The Monarch was feeling . . . more to the point, was behaving ... a bit
grumpy. The Triune Monarchy had been “protecting” the pashalik of
Little Byzantia on behalf of the T urks for a long generation, and now the
seemingly interminable negotiations for its annexation to the Empire had
taken a great lurch forward. The Sublime Porte had at last agreed to name
a sum of money. But in return for this the Sultan was now insisting that
the Emperor of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania should henceforth be
known as Emperor of only Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. "What?"
demanded Ignats Louis. "What? You mean that henceforth We’ve got to
give up calling Ourself ‘Emperor de jure of New Rome and All Byzan-
tium via Marriage by Proxy’? What?" His bulging eyes bulged more and
his long nose seemed to grow longer; he gave the ends of his famous
bifurcated beard two tremendous tugs. “WHAT?”

“Yes, Sire,” said his Prime Minister. He had been saying so for a long
time. Or, at any rate, it seemed a long time to him.

“Won’t do it,” said his Royal and Imperial master. “Won’t think of it.
Won’t yield the point. Never. Never.”

They were in the Privy Closet, a vast room jammed with curio cabinets
and grand pianos covered with shawls and photographs and daguerro-
types and miniatures, plus the single harpsichord on which Madame
played for the King-Emperor sixteen minutes twice a day. The Prime
Minister was terrified that he might accidentally brush to the floor a
sketch on ivory of the infant King of Rome or an early ambrotype of the
late Queen of Naples; the Emperor, who could be a sly old fox when he
wished, knew this and sometimes chose the Privy Closet whenever he
particularly wanted to punish the P.M. by making him be brief. Standing
as stiff and motionless as he could, the P.M. said that the point had been
repeatedly yielded. “It has been yielded to the Senate of the Republic of
Venice, to the Holy Roman Emperor, to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor,
to the Vatican, and to the King of Greece. Among others.”

Ignats Louis stared stubbornly at an ostrich egg in one of the cabinets.
“Sec? Yield, Yield, Yield,” he said. “We shall be little more than a mere

26 AMAZING

petty chieftain if this keeps up. Where has it not yet been yielded?” His
first minister informed him that it had not yet been yielded to San
Marino, Paraguay, and Mt. Athos. “Besides Turkey, of course.” But this
merely made the Old Man grumpier. Mt. Athos! The very last time the
Proxy Claim had been invoked was in a dispute over the placing of a
faldstool in the Pannonian Phalanastary at Mt. Athos . . . and had the
monks been grateful? Not a bit! “Won’t yield. Sorry We yielded to the
King of Greece.”

The P.M. silently sighed. Then he played his last card. (A threat of
resignation was no card at all: each time he tried to play it the Monarch
said. Good.) “I am authorized to inform Your Royal and Imperial
Majesty that if Your Royal and Imperial Majesty will yield what is after
all a mere pretense, and has been since 1381, the Sultan will bestow upon
your Royal and Imperial Majesty the style and title of Despot of Ephesus,
it being clearly understood that the title is purely of a despotic, I mean, of
a titular character and no longer annually entitles its holder to a caravan of
figs, a she-elephant, a eunuch barber-surgeon, or any other of its formal
perquisites, including flaying and impalement. Though the Sultan might
yield somewhat on the figs. . . .”

Silence. “Despot of Ephesus, hey.”

“Yes, Sire.”

More silence. Then: “The King of Greece won’t like that, will he?”

This time the Premier did not conceal his sigh. “No, Sire.”

“Heh heh. Take the wax out of his moustache! Hey? Where’s the
ticket?” The P.M. bent down just the slightest bit and indicated the
parchment assumpsit which, red seals, ribbons, and all, had been in plain
sight atop the writing-board on the Monarch’s knee all the while; the
Monarch dipped the short-trimmed quill into the purple ink, and
scribbled IL RI (Ignats Louis, Rex, Imperator), called, “Page!” and
stood up. The page presented the Premier with a sanding-box, the
Premier sanded the signature, the Monarch said There went a thousand
years of history down the goo-hole, the Premier said that it was merely
836 years and that the claim had always been dubious and (growing a
trifle confused) that Little Byzantia was worth a mass.

“News to me the Turks say mass,” observed the Monarch, pouncing.
The P.M. winced: good. Still IL RI felt grumpy over his yielded point
and phantom crown, little though he could imagine himself riding his
Whitey horse into Yildiz Kiosk and proclaiming, “Stamboul is my wash-
pot, over the Sweet Waters of Asia do I cast my shoe!” Well, he was
entitled to do rowething to amuse himself, wasn’t he? “Page,” said he,
“get over to that clever young fellow Engli who used to be Equerry here.
Dr. Eszterhazy he calls himself now, and tell him that Uncle Iggy will see
him tonight, usual time and place; exit the Despot of Ephesus, shejss-
drekka!” Out he went.

Eszterhazy-Autogdndola 27

The Prime Minister looked after him with opened mouth. Then he
looked down at the page. The page looked badk at him, his rosy face
perfealy blank. “I will see Your Excellency to the door,” said he. He saw
His Excellency to the door, closed the door, then turned two cartwheels
without disturbing a single bibelot, and then, as sober as before, he went
to change from court dress into street clothes.

All was quiet in front of the hotel in the little square at the bottom of the
Street of the Defeat of Bonaparte (commonly called Bonaparte Street). It
was a rare alley, even, which had no name in Bella, capital of the Triune
Monarchy, and this was a rare square, for it had no name at all; the hotel
was a private hotel; its owner was one Schweitz, a Swiss, a man for whom
the word “discreet” was inadequate. Engelbert Eszterhazy was then
engaged in his preliminary studies for the degree of Doctor of Science (a
process subsequently completed in Geneva); he had bought the house at
Number 33, Turkling Street, and was slowly having it rebuilt according
to his plans. For the present, Eszterhazy had rooms in Schweitz’s hotel,
and on a certain evening at an hour between early and late Eszterhazy had
a few guests. By now it had been a while said of him that he was hopelessly
eccentric but damnably clever and so best not crossed — on the sideboard
tonight, for example, was a collation catered by Colewort — who was he?
— he specialized in serving up snacks after the funerals of the upper sort
of cartmen, that’s who he was — on the sideboard tonight was cheese,
head-cheese, fruit-cheese, fruit, two sorts of simple cake — if you wanted
French kickshaws you could choose to hire a “French” caterer, and
Eszterhazy did not choose to — beer, lemonade, and the standard Panno-
nian wine called bullblood.

A lull in the talk. Another guest entered. “Ah! Uncle Iggy! Welcome,
welcome! You are just in time!” Eszterhazy announced, “Tonight we are
perhaps going to summon up some familiar spirits. Perhaps some unfa-
miliar ones. Madame Dombrovski has been so very kind as to agree to see
if entities not bound to earthly vessels will tonight be moved to employ
her as a medium.”

Madame Dombrovski asked that no one be so formal as to call her so.
“Pliz, pliz,” she begged, extending her ample arms (she had once been
prima coloratura at the Zagreb Opera, where, it is well-known, no thin
coloratura has ever appeared); “Pliz. Seemply Katinka Ivanovna. Een
You-Rope, eat ease vary furmal, bot I hahv leaved een America, whar
ease vary e««-furmal. Not so, Pard? she asked one of the guests; he
nodded and, rising, was perhaps about to speak; but Katinka Ivanovna
went on. “Pair- hops the spear-eats wheel feel moved, as Dr. Eszterhazy
hos sayed. Pair-hops nought. Moderne science hos provide us weeth the
planchette, een America we call eat the wee-jee board. Sometimes the
spear-eats appear and spik via the planchette. Bot sometimes they peak a

28 AMAZING

human beink. Who con say wheech? Whale, we most see.” Beaming, she
began to roll a cigarette. Touches of pink petticoat peeped here and there
from above and under her frothy blue dress: Katinka Ivanovna was
clearly not one of your fanatically neat dressers . . . perhaps that New
World informality of which she spoke had accompanied her back to the
Old World. Her abundant hair was red, that is, to state it a shade more
precisely, henna. Perhaps it was naturally, if unusually, her own hair
color; perhaps she had made the Pilgrimage to Mecca. Perhaps not.

Who else was present? Well, there was a rather small and pudgy man to
whose clothes and shoes the word glossy could not have been applied, or,
at any rate, not without grave risk of terminological inexactitude; perhaps
just as well, for their gloss could not but have suffered under the rain of
food fragments produced by his rapid eating — shall we say “guzzling”?
yes we shall — at the sideboard: and all the while he rolled his prominent
eyes around and around at the company. This was Professor Gronk, in
whose scientific mind and work Dr. Eszterhazy was vastly interested.
Professor Gronk had been well-known at one time for his having cou-
rageously piloted eleven balloons out of, and twelve balloons into, Paris
during the Siege. Or, vice versa. The Prussians had referred to him,
perhaps a bit sourly, as der verfluchte blockaderunner; “blockade-
runner” is a word which does not translate easily into Prussian, but they
had done the best they could and dropped the hyphen. Their new
Colonial Service in Africa was reputed to be busily working on the many,
many possibilities of the word hottentotenpotentaten. Subsequently Pro-
fessor Gronk had applied himself to coal-tar derivatives in Montpelier
and steam-plows in Silesia, alas sans spectacular success, but his past as
ballonist was always with him and his head remained, so to speak, in the
clouds.

Also present was a rather thin woman with rather beautiful eyes who
was said to have been once the morganatic wife of a Grand Duke; be that
as it may, it seemed to be the case that once a week a courier from the
Russian Embassy did call upon her and, being shown that she was still in
Bella and not, say, St. Petersburg, proffered a bow and an envelope which
might very well contain an order upon a bank in Bella, and not, say, a copy
of a poem by Pushkin. The lady was called Countess Zulk and was known
to be interested in moral, ethical, and spiritual matters of all sorts.

Hovering over the Countess was a very striking figure indeed. This was
the Yankee Far-vestern frontier poet, Washington Parthenopius “Pard”
Powell, whose dark-red curls reached halfway down his back where they
left a sort of Plimsoll line of perfumed bear-grease on the blue-flannel
shirt which was his trademark. “The children of nature ma’am for so I
denominate my beloved Redskin brethren who made me an adopted
offspring under the name of Red Wolf Slayer when I lived amongst them
as the one and only White Indian Scout and the husband of the great chief

Eszterhazy-Autogondola 29

Rainmaker’s beloved daughter the princess Pretty Deer whose death
broke his heart and purt near broke mine too for pretty dear was she to me
they have a mighty marvelous appreciation of the great spirit of nature
ma’am and whut you might call a extra-ordinary pre-science of things
happening afore they really happen oh I recollect many sitch occasions
ma’am yessurree.” He wore buckskin trousers and moccasins embroi-
dered with porcupine quills in several colors and he sometimes wore over
his blue flannel shirt a vest of rawhide with long fringes and he wore a
bowie knife and a broad-brimmed hat very much squashed and he
smoked a calumet adorned with feathers and he was immensely popular
right just then in Bella. Crowds gathered just to watch him stop and scan
the city streets with one hand shielding his eyes and then wet one finger
and hold it up to see which way the wind was blowing. Even now. Uncle
Iggy was regarding him with fascination.

“Oh Mr. Powell — ’’ the Countess began.

“Just ‘Pard’ ma’am eph yew please fur we ore all pardners in this great
trade and commerce which is life ma’am.”

The Countess sighed and said How True! Oh How True! and then
asked. “In this life with the Redskins, Pard . . . was this before or after you
were in Honduras with William Walker?”

Pard struck a pose. “It was after ma’am it was oh long after though may
I not call you Sis instid of Countess fur ore we not all brothers and sisters
in this one great human family I may why shore well Sis as I was sayun Sis
well now whut was I sayun ah yes now it come to me well as I declare in
my Fifth Epic Poem in Honor of William Walker the last Conkwistadoree:

“Whenas a mere lad in Honduras with the great William Walker
Who was a man of action and not much of a talker
It is a vile canard to say he intended to extend slavery
This is said in order to disparage his very manly bravery
He set his calloused hand upon my boyish curly pate
‘Pard,’ said he, ‘love is much richer than hate.’

These words I always recollect when my life is far from ease
He spake them unto me as we galloped through the trees. . . .”

Pard stopped at this point and turned away and brushed his eyes with
his forearm; the applause died away in a murmur of sympathy.

The murmur was interrupted by a harsh and argumentative voice, that
of Baron Burgenblitz of Blitzenburg, widely known and widely feared
and thoroughly disliked as “the worst-tempered backwoods noble in the
Empire”; even now he was on one of his too-frequent trips to the Capital
to complain about some fancied infringement of feudal privilege, threat-
ening as always that if he obtained no satisfaction he would retire to his
castle-fortress and haul up its drawbridge and fire his antique but still-

JO AMAZING

functioning cannon upon any interlopers who came within gunshot
— and meaning, anybody. “Yes yes, Mr. Wash Pard, we have often been
informed that you were in Honduras, and we have often read that you
were in Honduras, and you have just now told us that you were in
Honduras; and so I have only one little small question to speak to you — ”

“Speak without fear, my brother.”

'‘‘'W ere you ever in Honduras?"

The company froze. Would Pard’s hand reach for the scalping knife in
its sheath at his belt? Would Pard’s hand reach for the tomahawk, set in
the other end of the calumet? The company froze. Pard, however, was far
from frozen; the look which he looked at Burgenblitz was far from
freezing, it was burning hot. “Boss,” he demanded, “say, was Dante ever
in Hell?" Burgenblitz’s mouth, already open to sneer, grew round. Then
oval. All waited for him to say . . . whatever. He said nothing. Nothing at
all. At least not for a very long time, and then upon some other subject. It
was, later, felt that Washington Parthenopius “Pard” Powell had had the
best of that scene.

But to give a complete roster of those present might be felt tedious; it
may however be mentioned that among them was a man in later middle
age dressed rather in the manner of a riverboat captain trying to disguise
himself as a provincial seed-and-feed dealer. It was a fact that Ister
riverboat captains did, often, try to disguise their trade: whatever might
have been the case on the Mississippi, it was not looked upon as especially
glamorous on the Ister; and those obviously of it were likely to be
followed at a safe distance by small boys calling, “Here comes the
onion-boat!” and similar indignity. The man was carefully dressed in a
suit of best broadcloth obviously tailored by a middling-good provincial
tailor of cut at least a generation out of date; his shirt was of staunch linen
but it was visibly yellowed from lack of having been sun-bleached.
Nearby rested just such a beaver hat as still found fashion and favor in,
say, Poposhki-Georgiou. But the riverboat captain had forgotten to take
off his deck-boots, as they were called. And he was still wearing the
green-glassed spectacles, even though the yellow-red gaslight of Eszter-
hazy’s room did not glare as did the ripples on the river. So, when
Eszterhazy merely waved a hand by way of introduction, saying, “And
this is Uncle Iggy from Praz,” at the very most the others smiled gently.
No one noticed that Uncle Iggy’s beard, brushed straight downwards,
showed a tendency to part, as if it were customarily brushed bifurcated;
anyway Uncle Iggy fairly often ran his hands down along it, unobtru-
sively pushing it together again. Nothing could have been done to shorten
the nose, but, somehow, the glasses seemed to change it. And the pouched
eyes were unobtrusive behind the green glasses. When someone asked,
“And what do you do in Praz, ah. Uncle Iggy?” and the answer, “Well, I
be in the feed-and-seed trade and also we do a good line in butter and

Eszterhazy-Autogdndola 31

egg,” was delivered in a rich Scythian-Slovatchko border accent — well,
weren’t most riverboat captains from the Scythian-Slovatchko border
country? — no one recollected that his R. and I. Majesty was also from
exactly there. And who knew how much the Court Gothic accent irked
him damnably? For that matter, who called to mind the disguised,
nocturnal roamings of Haroun Al-Rashid? Pseudo-bourgeois Uncle Iggy
loading up on the black bread and head-cheese with strong mustard was
perhaps suspicious, but the suspicion led up the wrong road. As Uncle
Iggy meant it to.

At length, during one of those inexplicable pauses which occur in
conversation, Katinka Ivanovna made a small sound sufficient to attract
attention, tossed the end of her hand-rolled cigarette into the fire-place.
Then she gave a frank stretch. Then, glittering with good humor, she said
that perhaps it was time to see if the spirits might be ready to come. At her
requests the gaslights were turned low and a silence was to be kept until
such time as it might appear to the company that she, Katinka Ivanovna,
had passed into a trance state: after which, questions might be asked her;
she herself requested only that they should not be questions seeking for
personal gain. To this rather broad hint that no tips on the bourse would
be forthcoming, the company turned up its eyes in horror . . . and perhaps
some slight disappointment. . . . She lounged back in her chair and closed
her eyes. The inevitable squirming of people who have been told to be
quiet died away, there was a very audible stomach-gurgle, a guffaw
broken off. Then . . . nothing . . . and again nothing . . . then the breathing
of Katinka Ivanovna grew heavier. Her eyes were now partly open. She
was not sleeping. She was not awake. Then her host, by gesture, by
raising his eyebrows, indicated that it might be question-time.

Countess Zulk sat up straight. “Our dear Katinka Ivanovna has told us
many times of a Master Ascended who sometimes comes down from the
Ghoolie Hills where his maha-ashram is; that is, in a non-material form
he comes down, and if requested will impart messages of the deep)est
spiritual import. His name ... his name is Maha Atma Chandra Gupta. I
should like to enquire if Maha Atma Chandra Gupta would condescend
to say something to us.”

There was a long silence. Then, suddenly, the lips of Katinka Ivanovna
opened, and a voice spoke through them. It was not her voice. It was the
voice of a man and it spoke in English, a clipped British English, but with
a trace of something else . . . perhaps a lilt like that of Welsh. “ There is too
much coriander in this curry!” the voice said, sharply. No one else spoke a
word. After a while the voice spoke a word, several words, and this time it
sounded very annoyed. “Dal?” it enquired. “Do you call this dal? An
untouchable would not touch it! It causes me the utmost damned astonishment
that you should set this before me, purporting it to be dal!” The voice ceased

32 AMAZING

abruptly. Silence. The gaslight hissed. Again the voice spoke. It said,
''Excellent!" The tone of sarcasm was unmistakable. "Excellent! Mango
chutney without mango! Excellent!”

For another long moment the gas-light susurrated without further
sound accompanying it. Then, so suddenly that everyone started,
Madame Dombrovski was on her feet, her palm pressed to her bosom.
"La!" she sang. "Fa so laaa . . .” In another moment, wide awake now,
she burst into hearty laughter, her golden inlays a-gleam. “Pliz,” she
begged, “pliz tall me, deed a spear-eat spick?”

Sudden embarrassment. Eszterhazy coughed. “The Maha Atma
Chandra Gupta — ”

“Ah, that great soul! Two hawndred yirs he is stayed een he’s maha
ashram e’en the Ghoolie Heels communing veeth the avatars! Amrita, a
spear-ritual nectar, they breeng he’m; udder vise only vonse a yir solid
food he taked; dal veeth curry, a spoon fool. And mango chawtney, half a
spoon fool. — Vhat he sayed?”

The company looked at each other, looked at Katinka Ivanovna, looked
at Eszterhazy. Who again coughed. “Evidently the Great Soul spoke in
metaphors which we, with our gross perceptions, were really not quite
able to interpret. . . .”

Quite suddenly and with no word of warning — unless, indeed, a
somewhat slurping sound caused by licking a blob of mustard off his knife
could be so considered — Professor Gronk said, abruptly, “In regard to
the Autogondola- Invention on which I have been working for five years
in order to present it to Scythia-Paimonia-Transbalkania, my dearly
adopted Parentland,” and there he stopped.

“My dear Professor,” said Eszterhazy, smoothly taking the savant
gently by an elbow and turning him around, “I perceive that you have not
yet tried the very-yellow goat-cheese, although your opinion is one which
I particularly value.” Professor Gronk calmly reloaded his plate, plopped
on some more mustard, and ate with a dreamy air.

“ ‘Goat-cheese,’ hah!” exclaimed Baron Burgenblitz. “The peasants in
Hyperborea are cutting up about the goat-tax again, eh, and why? — why,
the devil, or some other ancient influence, has gotten into their goat-
herds and they don’t want to have to pay twice ... ah I wish those
tax-collectors come parading through my barony, damn them. I’d get up
into my castle-fortress, pull up my drawbridge and bombard the lot with
my artillery, damme if I wouldn’t!” And he gnashed his teeth and gazed
all round about with bloodshot eyes and left little doubt that, given the
opportunity, he would do just that. “A whiff of grape-shot, that’s what
they need! I’d goat-tax them, rrrrgggghhhh!”

But at this point Katinka Ivanovna with mellow voice suggested that
they sit down at table and try to find what the planchette had to tell. The
oui-ja board somewhat resembled an easel laid flat, on which had been

Eszterhazy-Autogondola 33

painted the letters of the alphabet and the first ten numbers, plus a few
other signs. On it rested a sort of wooden trivet with casters. “Now,”
suggested Eszterhazy, “if several of us, perhaps three, will sit down and
place the tips of the fingers lightly on top of the planchette so that no
single one person will be able to move it without the two others being
aware, it is said that the spirits may guide it to various letters and numbers
. . . perhaps by this method spelling out a message. So. If Katinka
Ivanovna would be kind enough? If Countess Zulk — ? And . . . oh?
What? I myself? Oh. Well, very well. Now! Pard, if you will kindly
observe the letters which the planchette touches as it moves, and call
them out? And if someone else will please use this pencil and paper to
write them down? Ah! Uncle Iggy! Thank you very much! Shall we
begin?”

The three of them sat around the small table with their fingers resting
lightly on the light piece of wood. Once more: silence. Nothing moved
but the gas-flame and its shadows. Then something else did. The
planchette suddenly and very smoothly glided across the board towards
the arch of letters. Then it glided back. Then . . .

The lateness of the hour had not prevented Professor Gronk from
methodically continuing to graze his way along the sideboard, and the
bottle-shaped bulges in his coat-pocket showed where anyway some of
the otherwise undrunk beer, lemonade, and bullblood wine had gone. At
length he paused. Gave a long, slow look up and down. All that remained
was a half a pot of mustard. Dreamily, the Professor took up a small spoon
and calmly consumed the contents of the pot. He stayed a moment, a long
moment, looking into it. Then he gave a huge eructation. Then, the
attention of his host and the one other remaining guest having been
attracted, he said, “The aerolines.”

“The aerolines?”

“The aerolines. For the Autogondola-Invention. I have just had an
idea.” And, doubtless thinking deeply of the idea. Professor Gronk glided
away, still holding the mustard-spoon in one hand.

Uncle Iggy had looked up, but he did not speak until the inventor was
gone. Then he asked, “This . . . invention . . . ?”

Eszterhazy pursed his lips. His moustache was grown thicker; now and
then he was obliged to trim it. “It has ... as an idea . . . some merits. Some
. . . possibilities. Perhaps we shall live to see them realized.”

Uncle Iggy said that perhaps they might live to see the moon mined for
cheese. Then he picked up the paper on which he had written down the
letters indicated by the planchette as it moved hither and fro upon the
oui-ja board, and lightly smacked it with his free hand. It had been found
necessary to eliminate a number of letters; this was perhaps usually the
case; out of what was left, one or two statements had been extracted ... no

34 AMAZING

one had cared to call them messages. Eszterhazy issued a slight sigh. “Ah
yes, the spirits tonight seemed rather concerned with food. Still ... I hojje
you were amused . . . ?”

Guest seemed to wrestle a moment with answer, head crooked ear-
nestly to one side, lips moving before utterance was quite ready. Gas-light
reflected on polished wood and brass and glass, made shifting shadows on
flowered wall-paper.

“Diverted. Yes. I was amused . . . sometimes Always, though, I was

diverted. And ah my God! how I need diversion. Ah it’s not like in the old
days, before the Big Union,” when, of course, the Two Kingdoms and the
Hegemonies had become the Empire; “in those days you could call the
Turkish Gypsies or the Mountain Tsiganes into the Old Palace and you
could sing and dance and stamp your feet and break wind,” (though
“break wind” he did not precisely say), “but nowadays, damn it, oh well.
— Yes. Now, that American poet from the American Far-vestern Pro-
vince, his loyalty to that Valker Villiams or whatever name, really a
mere adventurer I suspects, but admirable loyalty and his half-wild
costume so fascinating, even that beast Burgenblitz was taken with him
by and by — hah! the Pard gave Burgen’ a very good answer I thought!
And why of course cut my foot off,” (though “my foot” he did not
precisely say), “if that Madame Dombrovski ain’t a fine full figger of a
woman!”

His face, which had lit up, now became somewhat troubled. “But, now,
Engli, what d’you make of this here,” and he held up the paper.

Hog-lard hundred ducat a hundredweight, Eszterhazy read aloud.
Such was the first message, if “message” really it was, of the spirits across
the board. “Hmm, well, the lard-merchants at any rate should be happy.”

“Uncle” raised eyebrows. “Oh, should they? If the lard alone costs a
hundred ducks a hundredw’ight, how much d’you think the rest of the
hog’s going to cost?”

“Why ... I had not thought.”

Guest made a sound between groan and grunt. “No, I suppose not.
Not yours to think about. Mine to think about. If hog-lard’s so high, it
follows that pork be high too; if pork be high, what of mutton, beef,
chicking, what of oat, wheat, grain in general, what of spuds? What’s the
cause of it a-going to be? Drought? Blight? Pest? All? Oh sweet caro mi
Jesu, not war I do pray?”

Host said that there might well be nothing in the planchette’s commu-
nication at all, or if there were, it might refer perhaps to a century in the
future when the value of monetary units would have progressively
declined, “owing to the inevitable spread of systems of credit. . . .”

Uncle Iggy did not however feel that spirits had come to speak of the
price of hog-lard a century hence. “No, it’s for me own time, depend
upon it. Some message to me. To warn about famine. At least. What ’s to be

Eszterhazy-Autogondola 35

done, Engelbert?”

Engelbert Eszterhazy let his chin sink upon his chest. Then he brought
it up again. “I should see to it, subtly as possible, that the Agricultural
Ministry set up or buy up or even long-term lease up very many dry
places to store Indian com and then other grain; these gradually to be
stocked according to general market price.”

His guest stood up. “What do you philosopher fellows call it? Ha,
yes, ‘a counsel of perfection,’ well, it’s something to think about and you
be sure I am a-going to think about it. Political economy and much such
fine phrases I gladly leave to others but when I hear of hog-lard at one
hundred ducks a hundredw’ight, why, then I have to think about the Old
Man and the Old Woman and the kids at the little old farm in the fields
and what might happen to them if prices go high as that. — Engli! My
thanks! Oh no you don’t follow me out, neither. ’Night.”

Rather soberly Engelbert Eszterhazy, Doctor of Philosophy, aspirant
Doctor of Science, considered what had just been spoken. It was said that
the great Cuvier could conceive of an entire species on the basis of a single
bone; now here was Ignats Louis — always Eszterhazy had thought him
a fine man but of never very much mind at all — conceiving of war,
famine, pestilence, and death . . . and all on the basis of a single theoretical
commodity price. It was remarkable. Whatever it meant. Or whatever it
would some day mean.

The Minister of Law was closeted with the Minister of War. The latter,
his ministry being the senior, spoke first. “Well, I see we have two reports
before us. One is on the possible dangers arising out of a demarche on our
borders on the part of Graustark and Ruritania, to occur shortly; sons of
bitches, why don’t they go bother the Bulgars?” The question being
rhetorical, he proceeded without waiting for an answer, “And the other is
the latest threat of the Baron Burgenblitz of Blitzenburg, etc., an Officer
of the Imperial Jaegers, etc., etc.; son of a bitch, why doesn’t he go bother
the Bulgars?” In neither case did he say, precisely, “bother.”

The Minister of Law shrugged. “But let us discuss him first, as I am
sure that you have already a filed plan in case of invasion by Ruritania and
Graustark, whereas we do not have a filed plan in regard to the Baron
Burgenblitz. His latest threat is based on his alleged feudal right to refuse
to allow one faggot of firewood to be taken from every cart thereof by way
of way-tax.”

The Minister of War swore frightfully and then very rapidly stuffed
snuff up each nostril and sneezed behind his hand and wiped everything
with a large and rather unmilitary-looking handkerchief. Then he asked,
“And has he said right?”

The Minister of Law looked rather like a Talmudic scholar who,
having just presented the most beautifully lucid argument showing how

36 AMAZING

in a certain instance Hillel was right and Shammai was wrong, has at
length come to the point where he must needs present the fact that
nevertheless in that instance Shammai was right and Hillel was wrong.
“Well, in a way. Yes. Technically, if it were presented to the Court of
Compurgation and Replevin, there is no doubt that the Court, if pushed
into a corner, would sustain him. But, well, for one thing, the Crown has
repeatedly offered to present to the Diet a Schedule whereby his and all
other such rights would be bought out; and all the Parties have agreed to
support it. But the cockchafer won’t apply to be bought out. And as for
forcing him to sell out, well, that presents problems, too. The Autarchian
Parties would not support it, surrender of feudal privilege must be
voluntary and gradual, they say. Just as the Socialists and Liberals will
not support his going on and denying himself the duty of paying all the
same taxes as others . Son of a bitch. Sonoiz bitch. ’ ’ The Minister of Law
pulled at his very full mutton-chop whiskers. But no solution came out of
them, pull as he would.

The Minister of War said that Socialist and Liberal leaders might
publicly protest Burgenblitz’s reactionary actions, but — he thumped the
green table between them — perhaps privately they were glad of them.
“When he ignored the toll-gates, claiming Special Privilege, who knows
how many Conservatives became more liberal or how many Agrarian
Smallholders began to think socialist? True, he did pay the tolls eventu-
ally, but he might refuse again whenever he feels like it. Same with
cattle-tax, same with the church-tax, with his, ‘The priest must have a
pig?’ says he; ‘I’ll give him the runt of the litter,’ now that just promotes
freethinking and infidelity — what century does he think he’s living in?
Keeps roaring and yelling that if he is bothered he’ll retreat into his
castle-fortress at Blitzenburg and haul up the drawbridge and fire on
anyone who comes near him, ho! Wish they’d let me have a free hand,
then! ‘My castle is my home?’ what! Just watch me with one battery of
artillery reduce his home to rubble: hoom-boom! BOOM! Eh?”

The Minister of Law sighed. “Yes, no doubt. But in this year of his
Reign the Emperor does not wish to reduce a subject’s home to rubble.
Why doesn’t Burgenblitz of Blitzenburg plant wheat and shoot birds like
other country gentlemen?”

But the Minister of War had no other reply to this than furiously to
stuff snuff up his nostrils as though each one were the touch-hole of an
artillery-piece.

Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy was certainly of the aristocracy, but so
distant from its main branches that no one had expected anything more of
him than that, so to speak, he ride a horse and shoot a firearm; he had not
even been expected to tell the truth, although he did. He had performed
his military service with honor and his palace duty with the same. Hv

Eszterhazy-Autogondola 37

might henceforth do as he pleased, and although it had not been foreseen
that he would be pleased to undertake a seemingly endless series of
studies, nevertheless that is what he had been doing. “He’ll get brain
fever at this rate,” it was said, but he did not get it; neither did he retire to
some distant castle to fill its neighborhood with rumor and with terror as
did Count Valad Drakulya; neither did he go to Paris and ride a white
mare through the Bois and now and then dismount in order to milk her
into a silver tassy from which he then sipped, as did Count Albert de
Toulouse-Lautrec. He did not fight duels. He did not join hunting-
battues in which thousands of game-birds or -animals were driven before
the guns of the shooters . . . but these eccentric non-performances were
eventually accepted. Often he had gone abroad, and though he had
learned not only to accept the smiles which visited mention of his nation’s
name but to admit how much the smiles were justified . . . foreign
ambassadors invited, for example, to an Imperial Review in honor of the
grand opening of a sanitary sewer in Bella: one which turned out to be the
first sanitary sewer in the Empire . . . nevertheless it was to his own nation
that he always returned.

Incomparably less large and vast than the Russian Empire, incompa-
rably less powerful than the German Empire, incomparably less sophisti-
cated than the Austro-Hungarian Empire — still, Scythia-Pannonia-
Transbalkania, its mere name a subject for risibility elsewhere, was his
Empire, his native land. It may not have functioned very well? so much
the more he was pleased that it functioned at all. Its Secret Police was a
joke? so much the more he too would enjoy the joke; no one laughed at the
Secret Polices in the other empires. Its many languages rivalled Babel or
Pentecost? let them: at least here no schoolboy was flogged for praying in
whatsoever minor mother tongue. One empire had already, fairly
recently, gone from the political map of Europe; and although the name
of Bonaparte still rang like a tocsin here and there, it was uncertain the
Prince Imperial would himself ever ring it successfully.

Day by day others asked, how fared their country’s wheat compared
with Russian wheat, its butter with Danish butter, its timber with Carpa-
thian timber, its tar with Baltic tar, its cloth with English cloth? Day by
day the same spokes of the universal wheel flashed by: love, sorrow,
terror, death, success, failure, hunger, joy, growth, decay, weakness,
strength: the wheel turned and turned and turned: nothing stayed the
same, no one bathed twice in the same flowing water for the water had
flowed on and flowed away. There is no star at the pole of the universe,
young Dr. Eszterhazy recollected the ancient astronomer; and if there
was and had long been but blankness in the comparable area in his own
country, then might there not be space and place for him? What he hoped
for, others did not even think of; what others did not think, might he not
think of?

38 AMAZING

And, after thinking, do?

As for fuel, if it were burnable, in Bella they burned it. Charcoal,
firewood, peat from the bogs of Vloxland (though in Bella only the
Vloxfolk burned it, perhaps because only they had the patience to wait for
it to boil a pot), coke from the Great Central Gas Plant (It was not very
great and there was, as a result, not very much coke; but every British firm
and office preferred it. Others were suspicious: coke was new. ), anthracite
and bituminous coal . . . Everyone was agreed that anthracite burned
better, cleaner, hotter — once it was burning — but there was the trouble
of getting it to burn — and if it were necessary to dump it on a fire already
burning with some other fuel, why, the feeling was general, why not
simply go on using the other fuel . . . instead? There were and had long
been not very far from Bella two mines producing a bituminous coal so
soft as to be rather friable. One was still in the hands of the descendants of
the mine-serfs, who operated as a sort of de facto cooperative; the soft coal
hewed out easily enough and the pit was not deep enough to be danger-
ous, nor was there any new-fangled nonsense about a tipple, grading and
sorting the lumps according to size: you either took it as the coalmen
brought it, slid and scooped off the coal-carts into ox-hide sacks and
thence into the coal-shed in the back by the alley-door ... or you did
without and used something besides soft coal . . . or . . . nowadays . . .
perhaps you brought it from Brunk.

Originally the Brunk mine-and-delivery service had operated the same
way as the other one did, but bit by bit Brunk Brothers had bought their
fellow-miners out. There had been three Brunk Brothers; now there was
one. For a quarter century, Brunk Brothers had concentrated on supply-
ing the railroad. And Brunk Brothers still did. But Bruno Brunk had
always had in mind that he would someday capture the market for the
stoves and fireplaces of Bella, and long he studied it. What was the
weakness of the other coaling company in regard to this market? — so he
asked. The answer was not hard to find: the local soft coal was so soft that
it tended to crumble, and it kept on crumbling; housewife and servant
were always busy with broom and shovel sweeping up the little bits and
pieces and the coal dust, and dumping it all on the fire. It made things,
well, dirty. This did not bother the men who brought in the coal from the
Old Pit, for things were dirty anyway if you worked in or near coal.
“Feathers is cleaner,” was their common comment to complaints. Some-
times, referring to their product’s undeniable cheapness, they would say,
“Burn gold.”

The first hint that something else might be an answer came when
Bruno Brunk bought a bankrupt wood-yard where the canal came into
the Little Ister. Sumps were dug. Vats and sluices were made. Folks
hardly knew what was a-going on. So, suddenly, hoardings all around

Eszterhazy-Autog6ndola 39

town blossomed with posters advertising Brunk’s Clean-Washed Coal.
Wagons delivered it — not carts: wagons. It came in slabs of several sizes
and each slab had, you see, here was the genius of it, had been washed.
And each slab was wrapped in paper, cheap paper to be sure, but
wrapped. And each slab (lumps were also sold but they were in paper
bags), and each neatly-wrapped slab was tied with twine, cheap twine to
be sure, but tied. One simply put a small bag of lump-coal on the grate and
a slab of wrapped-coal a-top: then one lit the bag (having first, as
instructed, nipped a small hole for air). By the time the bag-paper was
burned away, the lumps were burning; by the time the slab-paper had
burned away, the slab was burning. There was, to be sure, still soot;
Brunk had not thought of everything. But still it was cleaner, oh yes it was
cleaner, oh God it was cleaner!

. . . well, it did cost a bit more. . . .

The suppliers of the Old Pit coal watched their better-class business
vanish, and they watched in dumb surprise. Then they scowled, ground
their teeth, kicked their ponies, cursed, got drunk, beat their wives. Their
wives, none of whom had ever heard that a voice ever soft and low was an
excellent thing in women, beat them back. Presently and with police
permission a petitional parade was seen marching through Bella, and it
was composed of men whom much boiling and soaping and scrubbing
had turned from their usual coal-black to a singular and singularly nasty
reddish-grey: these were The Humble and Hardworking Loyal Laborers
in the Pit of Coal, as their quasi-partnership was called. In effect, the
petition petitioned that Government should Do Something; and what did
Government Do? Government’s reply boiled down to two words in a
language not generally spoken by the local coal-workers, to wit.
Laissez-faire.

Dr. Eszterhazy, in a general way, had been aware of all this, as Dr.
Eszterhazy, in a general way, was aware of everything in Bella. Some-
times, he felt, he was perhaps too much aware; he had just escaped from
an original (as it might be kindly to call him) who desired his patronage to
perfect a process whereby clarified goose-grease might be used for lamp-
oil. Eszterhazy somehow felt that this was a fuel for which the world was
not yet prepared . . . generally speaking . . . but this did not mean that the
process was yet without value: he had given the original in faa a note to
the Semi-permanent Under-secretary of Natural Resources and Com-
merce, suggesting that that ministry should have tests conducted. At
what temperature would clarified goose-grease freeze? At what, turn
rancid? Should the freezing-point prove very low and the rancid-point
very high, the product might be promoted to foreign ship-chandlers
provisioning long sea-voyages. Not only might it light the lamps but,
should supplies run out, it might feed the crews. It would be healthier
than lard and tastier than salt-butter; perhaps more economical as well.

40 AMAZING

Bella might even become the anserine equi\alent of the city quaintly
called “Porkopolis,” in the American province of Mid-vest.

. . . and should said minis try, /aw re de mieux, engage Doctor Eszterhazy
himself to make those tests . . . well, nothing wrong with that, was there?

This being in his mind, he was perhaps only mildly surprised to see a
girl herding geese down Lower Hunyadi Street. She wore the traditional
blue gauze fichu of the goose-girls of Pannonia; the goose-girls of Panno-
nia formed an almost infinite source of folk-lore. Who had not, as a child,
and perhaps as an adult, listened to xht Lament of the Poor Little Itty Bitty
Goose-girl of Pannonia, Betrayed by A Nobly-born Stinkard, and failed to
shed tears? Who would not recall lying on the floor by the firelight one
lowering winter afternoon whilst listening to old T anta Rukhelle, specta-
cles halfway down her nose, reading the story of the poor goose-girl of
Pannonia frozen to death whilst faithfully tending her master’s goose in a
sudden snowstorm? What popular melodrama or even new-fangled oper-
etta could fail to include at least one scene with a poor little goose-girl
in it? It was with, therefore, totally benignant reflections that he watched
this particular poor little goose-girl from (presumably) Pannonia march-
ing down the street; she was, equally traditionally, bare-footed, and
— with her blue gauze fichu and her lament — equally evocative; the
effect was only slightly marred by the fact that she weighed about 300
pounds. Eszterhazy, and, doubtless, everyone else watching noted that
her bare feet were quite black: and so, from halfway down their tradition-
ally white bodies, were her geese. And after her came about five-and-
thirty other such goose-girls, all of approximately the same description
and proportions, also driving piebald geese and also lamenting; nor was
this all.

Right behind them came marching a group of the downstream laun-
dresses, creating rather an effect in their unexpectedly sooty shifts; and,
as they marched, they did not merely lament: they banged upon their
washboards. And they yelled.

Loudly.

He resumed his walk in a rather pensive mood.

What did Brunk say? Brunk preferred to say nothing. What did the
Council and Corporation of the City of Bella say? Officially? Nothing.
Unofficially? Unofficially they pointed out that it was, after all, Brunk’s
coal and Brunk’s coalyard and Brunk’s riverine rights and there was not a
damned thing in the laws preventing Brunk from doing what he wanted
to do with any of them. It even suggested (unofficially) that the down-
stream laundresses might choose to launder upstream; but even unoffi-
cially it did not suggest that the entire Kingdom of Pannonia, which also
lay downstream, might also choose to move upstream. What did the
newspapers say? Very little . . . as yet . . . The newspapers did, however,
print an occasional “historical essay” indicative of the fact that (a) the

Eszterhazy-Autog6ndola 41

Emperor, besides being also King of Scythia, was also King of Pannonia .
. . and, incidentally (b) did possess certain feudal powers as,Warden of the
Waters. Nobody out-and-out pointed out that if the Imperial Crown, as a
Royal Crown, were suddenly to exercise its feudal (as distinct from its
constitutional) powers, how this might strengthen the position of any
feudal-minded nobleman intent upon exercising his own feudal powers.

Things were seldom simple, and this was clearly not one which was.

Meanwhile, did the middle-class housewives of Bella, the best custom-
ers of Brunk’s Clean Washed Coal, patriotically boycott the product?
Well, one ... it was, after all, clean ... it was, after all, not merely
convenient, it was fashionable . . . other things were really not the
consideration of Women . . . their own laundry was done at home with
well-water . . . and what were the waters of Pannonia to them? . . . One
fears that, no, they did not patriotically boycott the product.

The path of progress did not run smooth. Or even smoothly.

“Gracious sir,” asked a man who stopped Dr. Eszterhazy on the street;
a man in the traditional pink felt boots worn by Hyperborean elders on
festal or formal occasions; “Gracious sir, you has the look of a educated
and a influential noble: can you tell me where I should git to aks about the
spiritual seductions of our he-goats Back Home?”

Used as he was to odd and unusual questions, this one did startle. So
much that he instantly wished to learn more. “Uncle Johnus,” said he

— Uncle was merely common good usage in Hyperborea from a younger
man to his elder, and half the men Back Home there were named J'o/jwwi

— “Uncle Johnus, if you tell me more maybe I can tell you more, so let us
sit down at the tavern table yonder and have fresh rolls and roasted
pig-pizzle with a pipkin of rasberry wudky, and do you tell me about that;
the cost,” he said, smoothly, noting a suddenly-appearing furrow on the
other’s brow, “will be borne by me Out of the revenues of my grandser’s
estates, which otherwise we gentry might too easily be tempted to spend
on champagne wine and gypsy-girl-dancers. Come on over here. Uncle
Johnus.”

Came Uncle Johnus? Uncle Johnus came. “I can always tell a noble
gent when I sees one,” he said, contentedly. He skipped upon the rough
stone street as though it had been made of velvet. “I take it, my lord
Y oungLord, that you has travelled amongst us Back Home for you known
ezaxtly what we in the High Hyperborea likes for a high snack. ...”

Eszterhazy, feigning a sudden grimness which he did not entirely feel,
said, truthfully enough, “I am the great-great-grandson of Engelbert
Slash-Turk, the Hero of Hyperborea, through two lines of descent.”

Uncle Johnus attempted simultaneously to kiss the brow, cheeks,
hand, knees, and feet of the descendant, etc., but was prevented, the descen-
dant employing the magic formula, “Don’t spill the wudky.”

42 AMAZING

Eszterhazy-Autog<$ndola 43

Having managed to avoid spilling the wudky anywhere but down his
bearded throat and having eaten the first dish of rolls with as much
delight and relish as if they had been petit-fours, Uncle Johnus began to
tell the matter which had, by vote of his home hamlet, sent him to the
Imperial Capital; for, said he, “I tried to learn some’at in Apollograd,”
provincial capital of the Hetmanate of Hyperborea, “but they laugh at me
there, me lord YoungLord: they laugh at me!” Eszterhazy assured him,
with perfect truth, that he would not laugh at him; thus assured, the man
went on. Goats were very caimy creatures. Uncle Johnus said . . . he-goats
in particular. They could perfectly well remember that once upon a time
in old pagan days they had been worshiped as gods (“They mammal was
mommets, in them days,” he put it). But since then generally speaking,
being subjected for example along with other animals domestic to an
annual aspersion by the priests in blessing, such holy water had druv such
unholy ideas clear out of their heads. Mostly. However. Lately —

Here the waiter arrived with the bowls of roast pigs’ pizzle; Uncle
Johnus looked from this to Eszterhazy and from Eszterhazy back to the
goodies. Eszterhazy helped himself and gestured that his guest should do
so, too; conversation, it being assumed, could wait.

And wait it did. By and by Uncle Johnus licked his fingers and wiped
his immense moustaches on some fresh roll pieces and ate them and
sipped some more rasberry wudky and swallowed and began to speak
again. Them goats, now. Lately, however, through the agency of those
whom or that which Johnus was rather he not be asked to name, the
he-goats had begun to waver in their allegiance to the new and true
religion. “They now runs away from the herds, Slash-Turk. They has
crowns and garlands a-put upon their heads as in olden days. And they
dances — ah, YoungLord Slash-Turk, yes, to the sound of that evil music
they dances! They prances! They like to run wild in that there frenzy!
Sometimes they carries on till they be dead, or sometimes they dashes off
cliffs. And it’s a terror and a worry and a fright to us, Slash-Turk
YoungLord, what if they be not a-coming down to serve the she-goats in
the breeding-season? We shall have no goat-kids ... no kid-skins ... by
and by, so, no more goats ... no cheese ... no milk ... no meat . . . nor no
leather. . . .

“And after that, sir; what then?”

The immense wax-lights in the Grand Chamber of the Privy Council
were not needed at the moment, but custom required that they be lit, and
so lit they were, and their immense wax tears seemed a silent accompani-
ment to the words being spoken. With an immense sigh, the Prince-
President of the Privy Council said that their Intelligence Service was
clearly not as keen as it ought to be. The Turks, partly because of British
pressure, partly because of Russian pressure, partly because of Prussian

44 AMAZING

pressure, and partly because of no Turkish pressure at all — the Turks
had recognized that it was just about moving-day in their two predomi-
nantly non-Turkish provinces of Western Wallachia and Neo-Macedonia.
The T urks had recognized that they were to leave, and to leave soon. The
expeaation was that these two provinces would probably become auton-
omous nations.

“If this is what our non-keen Intelligence Service should have
informed us but perhaps failed to,” said a Privy Councillor, “we may as
well cut it out of the Budget and subscribe to the Swedish or the
Portuguese newspapers instead. You tell us in effect that applesauce is
good with pork. True. We already know it. Applesauce.”

The Prince-President raised from his stoop. Again the scarlet ribbon of
the Great Order was a taut slash across his bosom. “So. Do you already
know this? That our neighbors, those two rapacious, tough, absurdly
small principalities of Ruritania and Graustark, have between them
hatched a scheme to become extremely large at the expense of just about
everyone else? Even now . . . now, I mean ncrw . . . they are conducting
secret manoeuvres in the Disputed Areas, where not so much as a
sheep-warden or a Rural Constable patrols to prevent them, and if no
immediate and tangible gesture intervenes within two days, it has been
agreed between them thus: one will annex Western Wallachia and one
will annex Neo-Macedonia: thus at one stroke we are to be presented with
two newer, bigger, more swollen, more swaggering neighbors upon our
eastern borders . . . likely at once to dispute even more than is already
disputed . . . and this is a prospect which” — his voice arose over the cries
of outrage and the groans of dismay — “a prospect which we never
envisaged and for which we are absolutely not prepared . . .”

Someone demanded to know what the Turks were likely to do. “ ‘Do’?
They will protest and demand compensation and they will loot and slay
some other Christian folk, one which has the misfortune to live on the
Asian and not the European side of the Bosporus — ”

“The British?”

“They will make speeches in Parliament and cry, 'Hear, hear!’ ”

The Austrians . . . Russians . . . Prussians . . . French? “A fait
accompli."

A silence.

An elderly Councillor asked, “Might not His Majesty, even as a
temporary gesture, invoke the powers presumably latent in his Family’s
ancient title of ‘Emperor de jure of New Rome and all Byzantium via
Marriage by Proxy?’ ”

A murmur.

The Prime Minister cast a look of agony upon His Majesty, but His
Majesty did not even look up at him, spoke without raising his bowed
head. “His Majesty has just immediately recently, at the request of the

Eszterhazy-Autog^ndola 45

Turks in connection with the question of Little Byzantia, renounced that
title. It has not yet been gazetted, but the assumpsit has been signed.”
And, having signed, Ignats Louis bore the burden, and deftly led the pack
on another scent. Another moment they sat and wondered what the Turk
would do about Little Byzantia now —

A younger Privy Councillor demanded to know. Why were they all just
i/rting there? Had they not a Navy? At this the Minister for Navy awoke
with a start which alone reminded them that he had been there all along;
the same Privy Councillor at once demanded to know. Had they not an
Army? Arose the Minister for War. Grimly. Yes [he said], they had an
Army. He refrained from telling them why they had not a larger Army [he
said], nor would he refer to last year’s decision to diminish the Army’s
share of the Budget [he said] . “The facts are, however, that we have not a
very large Army, that our Army is deployed here and there and mostly not
near the eastern border, and that the Annual General Militia Call-up had
been postponed because the harvest was late and the Militia-men were
needed to help bring it in at home. Which they are now doing.”

“For if not,” interjected the Minister of Agriculture, “perhaps it will
spoil, prices will soar, and maybe not enough to eat.”

“Hog-lard at a hundred ducats a hundredw’ight,” said His Majesty,
not bothering to bother with Court Gothic. One great groan rang through
the Great Chamber, and the senior socialist Privy Councillor, a notorious
Freethinker, was observed to spit three times in the palm of his hand and
then surreptitiously to knock on the wooden framework of his uphol-
stered chair. Field Marshals and Ministers, Aristocrats or Political Lead-
ers though they were, still, the facts of farm life lurked never far away
from any of them. Asked a labor leader, “Oh sire! That high?”

Sire said merely, “It ain’t mud that puts fat on the hogs, master. It’s
maize.”

The leader of the Opposition asked, “ ‘. . . within two days,’ eh? And
what is the very soonest that an effective body of troops could be moved to
the eastern borders?”

Said the Minister of War: “Three days.”

Meanwhile, Eszterhazy had not only found no answer to the Mystery
of the Goats, he had not even found a way perhaps to finding an answer.
By the time he returned from his walk he was still perplexed. He made a
note of the question; then he turned to his work of the moment, a
laboratory experiment he carried on at home as adjunct to the one which
formed his current projea at the Royal-Imperial Institute of Science.
Some time passed: he was thus still engaged when a loud knock at the
door, a loud voice, and a loud trampling of feet advised him that he had a
guest. And which guest he had.

“Why, Doc,” asked Pard Powell, “why or yew at home in thuh middle

46 AMAZING

a thee afternoon on sitch a beautiful day? And why not in thuh great
outdoor, a-breathin in a thuh sweet soft air? Not ta be found, a course, in
thuh middle a town, but shorely we kin rint a couple a ponies and go fur a
leetle ride along the river and inter the trees ! Why, when I was livin on the
boundless prairies as thuh adoptid child a thuh Red Skin People, why my
hort beat loud with joy whiniver I buh-held a wild aminal or heard a
sweet-singin bird, now — ” Simultaneous with Eszterhazy’s suddenly
becoming aware that two of the glass pieces of his experimental equif)-
ment were improperly connected, Pard Powell reached out and imper-
turbably connected them; almost at once remarking, “I needn’t tell you.
Doctor, that silver and mercury are incompatible,” with no trace of
dialect or accent in his voice.

“No,” said Eszterhazy. “No, you needn’t.” Their eyes met. “Nor need
you tell me that it was from the Red Skin People that you learned the
techniques of analytical chemistry, for I fear I would not believe you if
you do.” Pard half-turned, made narrow his eyelids. Of a sudden, a
certain English word flashed into Eszterhazy’s mind as though the very
paragraph in the dictionary lay exposed before him. Glau-cous. 1. Of a
pale yellow-green color. 2. Of a light blue-grey or bluish white color. 3.
Having a frosty appearance. 4. . . . But never mind 4. It seemed to him
that even as he looked, the pupil of the American’s eye turned from pale
yellow-green to light bluish-grey to bluish white to pale yellow-green
again; and . . . always . . . frosty. It was damnably odd. It was uncanny.

Not changing his gaze, Pard said, “Well, no. Doctor, of course not.
You see, not only was I once a student, and a good one, too, of the
Academy of the State of New Jersey; but I later owned the best pharmacy
in Secaucus. If only I could have been content to go on compounding
calomel and jalap pills for constipated house-frows and brown mixture
for their coughing kids and tincture of cardamom for their flatulent
husbands, I might be not merely prosperous now, which I am not: I
might be rich. But one day it got to be too much for me, and just then
along came a drummer in pharmaceuticals and I sold out — lock, stock,
barrel, mortar, and pestle. And I went out West. And that is how
Washington Parthenopius Powell metamorphosed into Pard Powell. Oh,
to be sure, I have put a lot of fancy stitches into the splendid cloth on the
embroidery hoop of my life. Well, why not? But don’t take it for granted
that all the gorgeous touches are lies. They’re not. — Well . . . Not all.”

He gave his head a slight jerk, and all the mass of dark-red waving hair
rose and fell. There was a flash from the glaucous eyes. He laid his hand
upon his heart. “And as I puts it in my Fifth Epic Poem in Honor of
William Walker the Last Conkwistadoree:

Thudding onward o’er the Plains of wide San Peedro Sula

From whence the dusky Spanish Dons extracted mucho moola,

Eszterhazy-Autogdndola 47

We brothe the air that freemen breath and all our cry was ‘Freedom,’
We relished it like champagne wine, or Dutchmen relish Edam —

“Whut say we go fur a ride. Doc?”

Eszterhazy burst into laughter. “By all means, yes let us go for a ride.
Let me, first, put some things in order here.” Not instantly remembering
what the botanical specimens were which he picked up to dispose of,
absentmindedly he gave them a sniff and was about to administer an
exploratory, if cautious, lick, when Pard Powell cried aloud and dashed
forward.

“Don’t eat them things. Doc! They’ull drive ya plumb loco! Them’s
jimson weed!”

Astonished, aghast, Eszterhazy gazed at the plants. “Why . . . these
were, allegedly, woven into crowns to garland the heads of he-goats in
Hyperborea. What do you — ”

The Far-vestern Yankee frontier poet said he hoped to Helen his pal
Doc Elmer Estherhasty didn’t have him no goats there wherever. “Why
looky thar if that ain’t the very flower outa the devil’s garden. Datura
stromonium, or I’m a dirtbird!”

Lightning seemed to flash in the makeshift laboratory there in a small
scullery-room at Schweitz’s hotel. “Surely a relative of the deadly night-
shade, a prime ingredient in witches’ brew!”

Pard Powell pulled his long red-brown moustache. “Durn tootin! As
well as Hyoscyamus niger, a/ias Aewbane; and — as you so closely perceive
the nomenclaytcher — A tropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade. Anyone
a them will make ya curdle your dander, make ya scamper and cavort and
run ginerally mad. Or, as we so aptly puts it Out West, Loco! As well as
which, it might well kill ya.”

There was a sort of ringing in Eszterhazy’s ears. He shook his head
emphatically. “Is there any reason why r/je-goats should be exempt from
the effects?”

“None that I kin think of . . . she-c/izcA:ens ain’t, //en-bane. Git it?”

“Could the scent of the plants cause humans near it to think that they
had heard a sound like music? Fifing? Or . . . piping?”

“Not that I — well, durn it, eph yew thenk that, time we got outa this
stuffy ol’ suite! Let’s go for a ride!”

Somehow or other it happened that they made a few stops in the course
of their ride. Professor Gronk was found deep in his plans at his work-
shop. Without looking up and as though the newcomers had been there
all along, he said, “Straw would provide the heat for the ascendant
aspeas of the Autogondola-Invention. But straw would not fuel the
engine. Wood is insufficiently concentrated, and hence too heavy. Coal,
the same. Coke is better, but itill: too heavy. I have as yet no method of

48 AMAZING

drawing the flammable gases out of the atmosphere.”

Scarcely pausing to consider that his question might be considered not
serious and therefore resented, Dr. Eszterhazy asked, “What of clarified
goose-grease?”

The Professor said that he had not been working with the problem of
liquid fuel. “The engine is not set up for it. Then there is the problem of
the integument. [“The . . . interment?”] Silk is unquestionably still the
best. I have no silk. White absorbs too little heat, black absorbs too much
heat, red alone will do. Silk. Red.” He spoke as though speaking very
simply to children. “Of each piece,” he made measuring gestures, “such a
size . T wo hundred and sixty-four such a size pieces . The glue I have only
to heat. The wicker I have already framed. The engine is ready. I require
only a satisfaaory fuel, hot and yet light. Also of red silk, two hundred
and sixty-four pieces of such and such a size.” He turned upon his two
visitors a look of such combined melancholy and appeal that they felt
obliged to repeat the measuring gestures until he was convinced they
understood.

“Well, Purfessur, that certainly is a wonderful thing,” said Pard
Powell, slowly edging away. “I’ll sure think about that. I’ll sure be keepin
my eye out for red silk. — Whut the Hell’s the little guy talkin about,
Elmer?” he asked, once they were outside again.

Outside, in the scarcely paved streets between the old wooden houses,
children clapped and sang and danced. A food vendor chanted to them,
“Delicate eating? Delicate eating? A nice portion of large beef-gut stuffed
with chopped lung and rice, sauced with onion and garlic and red peppers
in the Avar style? Two pennikks, only two pennikks, delicate eating?”
But they did not pause for it. Eszterhazy assured his friend that it was an
acquired taste. They cantered on. At the next corner they stopped in
order for Pard to buy a bundle of the small flags of, of course, Scythia-
Pannonia-Transbalkania, the sort which are flown, or, rather, waved, at
parades. There was no parade due; but the vendor, a wizened cretin from
the Friulian Alps, perhaps, did not know this. Nor — seeing that he was,
after all, selling the flags — needed he care. “Be good souvenirs for back
home. I’ll give ’em to the Injuns. They already got pitchers a them
pie-faced Presidents.”

Farther along, and in a considerably better-housed neighborhood, if
not one where you were likely to meet your maiden aunt or her pastor, a
woman waved from a window and called out a greeting which they
politely returned. The greeting was followed by an invitation which they
politely declined. At the next window, another woman. Another greeting.
Another invitation. And at the next window . . . And at the next . . .
And . . .

“Dunno why they need any light,” said Pard, who had already pushed
his sombrero to a rakish angle. “Them red petticuts is bright enough.”

Eszterhazy-Autog6ndola 49

They rode on a moment or so before the same thought occured to them.
They mentioned the name and the need of Professor Gronk. And ... it is
to be feared . . . they both burst out laughing. “Sure to be silk,” Pard
declared. Still . . . He began to sing:

“I ain’t got no use for the women, the ladies and girls o’ the town:

They’ll stick to a man when he’s wirmin, and step on his face
when he’s down. . . .”

By and by they found themselves fairly near the mouth of the Little
Ister where it disembogued into the Ister proper, and whom should they
see sitting on her invariable stool but that well-known character, the
Frow Widow Wumple. Wumple (“God rest his soul”) had been a master
boatwright; his prows were famous; “dumpling-cutters” they were
called; and his relict lived by renting out the ways. Right now no vessel
was hauled up for repairs, scraping, caulking, painting . . . but who knew
what rascal might care to try? . . . and then try getting away without
paying! Therefore, as always, the Frow Widow Wumple on her stool.
Conversation with her was always interesting, providing only that one
had an infinite capacity for hearing the phrase, “Ah, they didn’t have
none o’ them things when 7 was a gal! ” — and Dr. Eszterhazy had. Today
the list of things which they didn’t have none of when the Widow
Wumple was a girl included: store-boughten butter, paved roads, a
disgusting French disease called la grippe, indoor plumbing, and some
foreign food named sandwhich . . . the Widow Wumple wasn’t quite sure
what this last was, but was sure it was unwholesome. “. . . bound to
be ... ” Another thing, etc., was gentlemen who would light up segars and
not offer one to a poor old woman with the affliction in both legs and
scarce a pennikk to bless herself with; Eszterhazy was so remorseful and
hasty that he forgot to blow out the lucifer match before tossing it away.

“. . . and she says to me [puff], ‘So you see Mother Wumple [puff], we
be getting married in church so I hopes you won’t draw the wrong
conclusion.’ [Puff] "See?' says I. ‘I ben’t blind,' says I. ‘Wrong conclu-
sion, indeed,’ says I. [Puff-puff] ‘Fve had 11 children of me own andean
count up to nine as well as the next one, the wedding feast we needn’t ask
about but send me some sugared almonds from the chrismation snack,’ ah
they didn’t have such things when I was a girl [puff . . . puff].”

Eszterhazy, in mock surprise, said, “Which? Christening or sugared
almonds?” The old woman cackled, smacked skinny hand on skinny
knee.

The lucifer had begun to burn more and not less brightly, and he felt
obliged to dismount and stamp it out. And stayed where he was, looking.

“Ah, that’s all that scurf from across the Little River,” the old woman
said. “First there come all that sawdust. Then come all that coal-dust.

50 AMAZING

The current wash them here, when the seas’nal tides was high. The both
of them has sort of conglobulate together and dried out and a body has to
be certain careful where she drop or dump a bucket o’ hot ashes or that
scurf will start blazin; ah they didn’t have none ’f them things when/ was
a girl but now I’m just a old woman with the affliction in both legs [puff] ,
and I can’t do nothin about anythin [puff]

Eszterhazy said that he would see to it that the rubbish was cleared
away. But he set no date to it. And the two cantered on. And as the two
cantered on, the European asked a question and the American delivered
an answer. “ ‘What do I think — ?’ Why, I believe old Burgenblitz is not
such a bad old son of a bitch for such a bad old son of a bitch as he is, you
know, Elmer. Trouble is, he is bored! He’s tired! Bein a European-style,
country gentleman bores him! Pokin fat pigs, feedin fat cattle, ballroom
dancin, opry, why he’s done it all, he is bored with it. He is tired of your
make-buhlieve hunts, they air all fakes, Elmer — peasants drivin pheas-
ants in front of where he stands a-shootin of them, servants loadin his
guns for him, servants countin up his kills for him — why they ain’t
no good wars he could jine up into right now — folks want to go to
Jerusalem they don’t go on a Crusade, they go on a Cook’s Tour — he
can’t read no books for pleasure.... So whut’s left for him to do but to dig
in his heels and say, ‘Nobuddy tells me whut t’doi’ Jest like some old
Florida Cracker.”

Much would “Elmer” have wished to ask him more about the Old
Florida Crackers . . . from “Old” Florida? and what did they crack, corn?

. . . but it was at that moment that everything changed; it was at that
moment that he encountered De Bly, the Civil Provost of the Capital and
ex officio a member of the Privy Council; De Bly was riding his dun
gelding and riding him hard, Eszterhazy could not quite make out where,
exactly, De Bly was going: and perhaps De Bly at that moment could not
have made it out either. And De Bly looked like doom.

He hailed him. The man looked up, mouth open, chops sagging, began
a gesture, let his hand fall, made as if to ride on: stopped, suddenly, waved
the younger man to come on. Began to talk while they were still not face to
face. “They tell me that you are a Doctor-Philosopher now, Eszterhazy, I
don’t know what that means, but I know you performed well in the
Illyrian Campaign, and I know you did something quick and clever in the
matter of that Northish King who came here incognito. Oh you better do
something quick and clever right now, I don’t know what it may be, but
damned quick — ” And then he told him what he had heard at the session
of the Privy Council.

Eszterhazy listened, quite without joy.

Then De Bly went his wild, bewildered way, and left Eszterhazy to go
his. Who, as he proceeded back towards the heart of the city, translated
for his companion. Who thoughtfully said, “Sort of like . . .oh . . . sort of

Eszterhazy- Autogtindola 51

like, say, Hayti and Santo Domingo tryin to carve up northern Mexico
between them. Would we like that? No we wouldn’t.” But Eszterhazy had
nothing to say to such a comparison.

And Eszterhazy had nothing to say when he heard Pard say, “How,
Burgey. You old galoot.” For a moment. He heard a wordless murmur.
There, wearing the undress uniform of an officer of Imperial Jaegers, was
Burgenblitz. He looked rather tired; and he looked at Eszterhazy, for all
that he had recently been his guest, with the same wary indifference with
which he looked at most people when he did not look at them with anger.
A spark blazed hotly in the younger man’s head. He raised his left hand as
though, it being his right, he were about to take an oath. “Baron,” he said,
“I absolutely deny that you have any authority over me whatsoever.” He
of course gained instantly the Baron’s interest ... if not his understand-
ing. “I also absolutely deny that I have any authority over you what-
soever.” The Lord of Blitzenburg was not denying this denial; the Doctor
of Philosophy and aspiring doctor of science went on, briskly but not
hastily, speaking with clear pronunciation but avoiding any special
emphasis of words; “Therefore not as one claiming authority and not as
one designating or yielding authority, but simply as one member of the
Order of St. Cyril to another, I do ask this of you: that you, aaing upon
the rank of special constable inherent in your own noble rank, take charge
of the field called the Old Fair Grounds. That you take charge of
whatever supplies may be sent to it. That you enlist the help of as many
soldiers or sailors whom you may need and find at liberty, as you are
entitled to do anyway by virtue of your own military rank . . . you are
certainly justified in treating them to beer . . . there is a crisis impending
and apparently the State cannot aa in time.” Eszterhazy ceased to speak.

The eyes of the Baron Burgenblitz of Blitzenburg had grown distrust-
ful, then became sly, then wandered to Pard Powell, whose own glaucous
glance met his . . . who nodded solemnly. Eszterhazy spoke again. “We
have learned that both Graustark and Ruritania may hold a demarche in
the Disputed Areas in hopes of annexing the Ottoman provinces.” The
Baron’s glance became absolutely opaque. “Sir,” said the Doctor, “I now
request my congee” He made an informal salute.

Burgenblitz returned it. “You may go,” he said, languidly. “And
damned if I don’t flay you, slowly and alive, if this turns out a tarradid-
dle.” (And doubtless he would, thought Eszterhazy. Claiming a feudal
privilege to do so.) The Baron was gone before the thought. Gone slowly.
But he had headed his horse towards the Old Fair Grounds.

“Brunk.” Abruptly.

Brunk (aggressively): “Can prove nothing! Nothing, nothing prove!”

Doctor (calmly): “No? I can prove I know the Emergency Laws of the
Year of Bonaparte better than you do.”

52 AMAZING

Brunk had been prepared to shout about the sludge in the river. Brunk
was dressed as usual in a suit appropriate to an upper clerk. Along with
this Brunk wore the foxskin hat of a country bailiff, a gorgeous gold watch
and chain, and a pair of miner’s boots. Poor Brunk! He did not yet know
who he was. Or who or what he might yet be. And, certainly, he was not
yet prepared to claim wide knowledge of the Emergency Laws of the Y ear
of Bonaparte — that fierce and frightful Year which first pushed the
Confederacy of the Lower Ister on its way towards empery — though
certainly he had heard thereof. “What Law Bonaparte?" asked Brunk.

“As an emergency measure I can here and now dismount and bum
your coalyard to the ground — ” See Brunk’s mouth open very, very wide.
“ — and oh certainly I should be obliged to pay compensation.” See
Brunk’s face indicating his calculation how much this could be, plus
interest. “Oh of course it would be compensation at the value of the place
during the Year of Bonaparte . . . what? A hundred ducats?”

“What a hundred ducks bum my place Bonaparte?!"

“But I won’t.” Eszterhazy. Very quietly. Brunk had begun to reel a bit.
Things were going too rapidly. He put out both his hands palms down at
breast level. He looked rather like a rather disorganized dancing-bear.

“Now here is what you have to do. . . .” Brunk, mouth a-sag, nodded
silently. “You have to take a few good men with wheelbarrows. Cross the
Little River. Now. Mother Wumple’s Yard. Where all the stuff has
washed up and dried. You are to break it all up. Into little pieces. About
the size of a common hen’s egg. Carefully. She won’t prevent you. And
then you’re to have your chaps wheel it along to the Old Fair Grounds.
Pile it on a couple of good large tarpaulins. Cover it with a couple of good
large tarpaulins. Got that?"

Brunk had been nodding, nodding. First he lifted one foot. Then he
put it down. Then he lifted the other. Then he put it down. Then he
asked. “What / must do next Boss my place Bonaparte don't hum?"

Eszterhazy thought a moment. Only a moment, though. Then, in the
crisp tones of an officer who has allowed the men to take two minutes to
piddle into a hedge, and Brunk would certainly still be on the Semi-
Active Militia Lists, the officer by his tone now indicating that it was back
to Forward! MARCH!, Eszterhazy said, “Draw four times four rations
upper NCO quality plus four times ten rations other ranks quality. And
see that it is delivered with the rest, ^o!"

And Brunk, breathing heavily, muttering disconnected words . . .
burn, Bonaparte, boss, rations, NCO, break, pieces, eggs . . . Brunk went.

Any decade, any year or month or week now, capital in Scythia-
Pannonia-Transbalkania would discover its own power. And leap, roar-
ing, forward. With, right behind it, labor. And yet and meanwhile? Well.
Not today.

Eszterhazy-Autogondola 53

Professor Gronk had accepted development as calmly as he had
accepted stasis. Washington Parthenopius “Pard” Powell, who had been
given his own emergency task to perform, had performed it. And had
returned. The inventor’s loft was a-blaze with scarlet silk. “What do you
mean, ‘Did I have any trouble?’ Why, harlots is the most patriotic class of
people they is, irregardless of nationality or theopompous preference.
Course I lied a lot. Told ’em I needed it fer to make belly-bands so the
sojers wouldn’t ketch the cholera in the humid swamps of them Dispu-
tated Territories or whutchewcallem. Even showed whut size to cut they
red silk petticuts cuttem up to. Then I give every house one a my little
flags. ’N then they all kissed muh. Well. Here we are. Do we stitch? Or do
we glue?”

In the Taxed Domestic Animals Division of the Excise Office.

“What does Skimmelffenikk report from High Hyperborea?”

Chairs were thrust back. Drawers rattled. Files were slapped down. The
motto of the Royal and Imperial Scythian-Pannonian-Transbalkanian
Excise Office was, “If you have nothing to do, do it very loudly, so
nobody will notice.”

“Here it is. Chief”

“There it is. Chief”

“Right over there. Chief”

“File Number 345 slash 23 dash 456, the 1 1th inst. Skimmelffenikk
reports from High Hyperborea. . . .”

The Chiefs round, whisker-encircled face took on a look of controlled
patience. “Yes?” he enquired. “Well? So?”

Skimmelffenikk’s report from High Hyperborea had been properly
received, posted, docketed, filed ... all the rest of it. However, it was
rapidly becoming clear, nobody had read it. Until now. Vows were
instantly (and silently) made to The Infant Jesus of Prague, All the Holy
Souls, and St. Mamas Riding the Lion, that the Chief not completely
blow up, declare Unpaid Overtime, fire them all, cancel the three-o’clock
borsht break — None of it. The Chief read to himself without sound, the
Chief read vocally in a mutter, then the Chief read altogether aloud.
Skimmelffenikk reports from High Hyperborea that to the sound of like real
weird music the untaxed he-goats had been dancing and prancing with like

crowns of flowers on their heads And this statement had been signed in

full by the Officer Reporting (Skimmelffenikk), attested by his Sergeant,
one Grotch; and confirmed by the latter’s Rural Constable, one
Mommed, who makes his Mark, said Mark being herewith identified by
the District Imam with Rubric in Turkish according to the Highly
Tolerant Imperial Permittzo. . . .

There was no use to look in the Rules and Schedules. Everyone knew
there was nothing on the subject in the Rules and Schedules. The Chief,

S4 AMAZING

with the near-genius which signifies predestined high rank, simply put
the file down and went home early.

Brunk — Brunk was by the way the coal-magnate; Gronk was the
inventor — Brunk had not got everything quite right. The bit about
digging up the entire bed of dried mixed coal-dust and sawdust and
carefully breaking it into egg-sized pieces, this he had done exaaly as
directed. It was the rations which had confused him, and this confusion
he had passed on to Frow Brunk. Frow Brunk kept a very hearty table,
and she did as she thought she was told. She emptied the smoke-house,
she emptied the bake-house, she filled a wagon full of bread and cake and
sausage and hams and brawns and cheeses and roasted this and pickled
that. Who knew what Bonaparte might want. The five soldiers and four
sailors whom Burgenblitz had in effea personally conscripted had never
had such a feast since . . . since . . . well, likely, never. And the barrel of
home-brewed ale which Frow Brunk had sent along caused the thin and
sour beer of the corner tavern to be quite forgotten, something for which
the keeper of the corner tavern was thankful, as when he had mentioned
the matter of payment the Baron Burgenblitz had given him such a look
that he had thought best to follow the example of that one of whom it was
written, “And so he departed, not being greatly desired.”

The conscripts had of course wondered what it was all about, but of
course they had not asked. True, they were technically on liberty, but
they had all spent all their money anyway, and their liberty now
amounted to the right to sleep on the Armory floor if they wished. The
Baron instead sent them to the Armory with a note for blankets, instead.
The Baron set up guard-posts; they stood guard. When the mysterious
whatever-it-was arrived, the Baron ordered it put in the middle of his
impromptu camp in the middle of the Old Fair Grounds. Food having
arrived, he had ordered rations distributed. To be sure, there were no
dishes, no utensils, no table nor even table-linen: no matter: his share was
neatly served him on a fresh-laundered skivvy shirt from a sailor’s
ditty-bag. And he ate every bit of it. And when some folk, having noticed
the campfire with curiosity, came nosing around, they were promptly
told to nose out.

Next morning:

First came the four fellows from the Royal and Imperial Navy, carry-
ing what appeared to be a New England whaleboat, saving only that New
England whaleboats are seldom if ever woven out of wicker-work. Almost
immediately after that two soldiers came drawing a gun carriage, and
riding on the limber and smoking a pipe and wearing his best ask-me-no-
questions look was Baron Burgenblitz. How had he obtained the gun
carriage? If you were an artilleryman alone on duty at the Armory and
Baron Burgenblitz appeared at five in the morning saying merely the two

Eszterhazy-Autog6ndola 55

words, “Gun carriage" would not have let him have it, being merely
thankful he did not also say, “Gun-horses" as well? Hah. On the carriage
was something covered over with oiled cloth. An expert on the subject
might have conjectured that under the cover was a steam engine. A very
small steam engine. And as to its being on a gun carriage, this may in fact
have been co-source of rumors which long subsequently vexed Graustark
and Ruritania, to the effect that “S-P-T has got steam-cannon! Oh God!”

— a few other vehicles followed.

There was no established drill for what came next. Out of the wicker-
work “boat” was produced a pile of bright red silk . . . well, bright red silk
what} the sailors might have wondered . . . but theirs not to reason why,
theirs only to fix the what? in places ordered by a suddenly in-the-here-
and-now Professor Gronk. There were a number of sections of wicker
framework. There were cries of, “Belay that rope! Smartly now! Five
marlin hitches on the larboard side! A bowline on a bight, I say! Rouse
up, rouse up, a bowline on a bight there!” and so on. Before the eyes of those
who did not pass the fence around the Old Fair Grounds something
rather like the ghost of an immense sausage — also made of wicker

— gradually took form. Bright red masses hung in place. A murmur came
from beyond the fence, then cries, then shouts. The cover was removed
from the gun carriage, a flat trough of thin wood was hoisted aboard and
promptly filled with sand from the ground and a thin metal plate placed
in it, and what was now sure enough affirmed to be a small steam engine
was lifted by many strong hands and set on the plate. And the Professor
was everywhere, setting in place struts, screws, braces, all thin, all light,
all strong, all long prepared — he filled the boiler and stacked jugs of
water fore and aft —

And now a number of pasteboard containers were opened by order of
Dr. Eszterhazy and given here a snap and there a slap, and one by one
were filled with the curious black objects from under the tarpaulins.
What were they? Professor Gronk, dreamer or not, had sometimes a way
of getting to the heart of things. “What are they?” he asked.

Eszterhazy, the wind riffling the short beard which had grown a trifle
darker in recent years, said, “This is that new fuel of which I spoke. It is
composed of the waste-dust of very soft coal mixed with sawdust of, I
should estimate, pine, with of course some residue of resin which acts as
both a binding agent and an inflammatory ... as a sort of phlogiston, to
apply a rather term . . . the whole lavaged with the water of the lower
Little Ister, and what semi-solids that might contain awaits further
analysis. I have had this fuel-substance cut up into small pieces so as to
make easier such finer adjustments of the flame as — ”

“Get it up,” said Gronk, shortly. His pop-eyes darted here and there,
rather like those of a chameleon keeping a sharp eye out for the cat. The
boxes of fuel were gotten up, the engine was by now fastened in its place.

56 AMAZING

whence, one hoped, any sparks would fall harmlessly into the sand, and a
lucifer struck to the first piece of fuel; a briquette it might perhaps be
called; perhaps not. It glowed and continued glowing even after the
match burned out. It was blown upon. More was added. In a few
moments a small fire burned in the grate beneath the engine’s boiler. The
arrangements above the engine were complex. From the catchment above
it led a number of sleeves and each sleeve terminated in one of the
drooping masses of red silk. . . .

And now was displayed one of the true beauties of the Autogondola-
Invention, for the fuel was made to do double duty: the same heat which
turned the water into steam also filled with heated air the bellies of what
were gradually discerned to be five beautiful, big balloons — five they
were in number, but the wicker-work frame lashed together according to
its inventor’s directions held all five cohesively as though they had been
one. The wicker boat lashed beneath began slightly to tremble.

And then two voices were heard, one of them familiar to the Doctor.
"Bon jour! Bon jour!” this one cried, in a strong accent not French. “Thee
spear-eats sayed me, ‘Ascend! These morning you shall Ascend!' Who
knowed what eat mins, ‘Ascend’? So I comb over wheeth Jawnny to find
out. These ease Jawnny. Bon jour! Bon jour!” Katinka Ivanovna wore an
outfit of brilliant-bright-orange, and a beaming smile, as she climbed into
the “boat” and looked eagerly around. Her blue eyes sparkled. Whatever
the spirits had meant, it evidently contained none of the gloom of the
Road to En-Dor.

Climbing in right after her was a fine large glossy animal of a man, with
astrakhan lapels on his surtout, a long thick sleek moustache, and an
atmosphere of the very best hair-oil: this, presumably, was Jawnny.
“Buon giorno! Buon giorno! Gian-Giacomo Pagliacci-Espresso; allow me
to present you a cold fiasco my very best produced Italian sparkle-wine,
tipo di champagne, you will prodigiously delight; marbn! And achi also
some bearskin lap-robe, plus here an entirety of one case of such my wine,
I bottle in Bologna, next my sausage-factory, brrr!”

Dr. Eszterhazy looked a bit doubtful as the signor helped place the case
in the center of the ’Gondola, but Professor Bronk, with a quick apprais-
ing glance, said, very briefly, “Ballast.” And returned in controlled
frenzy to fastening wires and aerolines, and to spreading out maps and
examining various pieces of scientific equipment. "Laaaa . . .” sang
Mme. Dombrovski, hand on bosom. She waved to what was now a large
crowd straining at the fence; the crowd waved back and cheered.

Another figure moved slightly. “Well, Baron Burgenblitz ... do you
come along?” asked Eszterhazy.

“Try to prevent me! — try. In regard to the source material of your
pretty red balloons, my patronage has supplied much of it.” The Baron
settled himself into a pair of the bearskin lap-robes, one of which he slung

Eszterhazy-Autog^ndola 57

over his shoulders, applied his pipe to his tobacco-pouch, and growled.

It was at this moment that Sgr. Gian-Giacomo Pagliacci-Espresso,
glancing around, said, with a slightly nervous tremor, “Pray inform the
sailors be careful with ropes, else this . . . this cosa . . . might accidentally
go,” his eyes rolled, he seemed suddenly to obtain a better grasp of
situation, “UP!” He leaped over the side, and from the terra firma
reached for Mme. Dombrovski; but the abrupt loss of his weight, plus the
greatly increased swelling of the red silk balloons, caused the
Autogondola-Invention to strain against the lines held by the sailors, who
— taking his last exclamation as a signal — stepped back smartly and
released them. From inside came cries of annoyance, perhaps alarm, but
these ceased abruptly. There was much else to do.

. The splendid scarlet Autogondola-Invention went soaring up into the
misty heavens. Gronk, at the scientific instruments, called out courses,
Eszterhazy plied the wheel which controlled the tail- and wing-vanes,
Pard Powell from time to time stuck his finger in his mouth and held it up
to test the breeze, from time to time suggesting slight changes in direction
so as to take best advantage of prevailing winds; the engine, as engines
will, went choog-choog, chuff-chuff;* and Katinka Ivanovna, waving
the tri-national flag, holding now on to one rope and now another,
semi-incessantly sang out, “Onward, great-glorious-successful Scythia-
Pannonia-Transbalkania, hairess to thee future weesdom of the ages!”
From time to time she avoided hoarseness by sipping from a fiasco of the
produce of Sgr. Pagliacci-Espresso’s winery; and, now and then, with a
merry gesture, she shared it with the others; when it or its successors was
empty she tossed it negligently aside ... on one occasion so much so that it
went clear over the side, and, hurtling through the clouds, picked up
impetus enough to pierce the surface of a certain farm-field known for its
dryness, where at once and in the presence of the farmer and his farm-boy
a fountain spurted. A hundred years later people were still dipping
hankies into it in the belief that it cured warts.

For long periods they flew through clouds and all was grey, then for
long periods the skies cleared and down below they saw the land as though
cut out of scraps of velvet by some elven artist, fields of vari-colored crops
green and greener and yellow and red; here and there a toy-town and its
fairy towers. Now and then they were above the clouds and looked down
upon fleecy layers towards which, almost, it seemed they might descend
and walk upon.

It was at one such moment that Burgenblitz of Blitzenburg said, “We
are nearer to Heaven than we were.”

Washington Parthenopius Pard Powell silently handed over the peace
pipe. The Baron silently took it.

*Also, wurble-wurble.
58 AMAZING

The Conjoint Chiefs of Staff of the Combined Ruritanian-Graustarker
Manoeuvres Near or In The Authorized Areas (Authorized sounded
ever so much nicer — and safer — than Disputed), the Margrave
Grauheim and the Prince Rupert-Michael, were feeling very pleased
with each other. There had been no sign of a sign from Scythia-Pannonia-
Transbalkania, no sign was really to be expected from Turkey (the Sick
Man of Europe was still very sick; Abdul Hamid’s method of preparing
himself for the throne was to take courses in mathematics, marksman-
ship, and magic), and God was in Heaven and the Czar was far away. The
Conjoint Chiefs stood at a table looking at a map which a century (and
then some) of boundary rectifications has rendered unrecognizable; but
as they did not know this, they continued feeling very pleased. The CCs’
uniforms had been ordered from the best military (or perhaps theatrical)
tailors in Potsdam; with pickelhaube helmets, long overcoats which
belted almost under the armpits and reached almost to the insteps, boots
with huge spurs, heads shaven, and long goatees and long moustaches
upturned, they looked frightful indeed: and when they considered this,
they felt even more pleased. The cookfires had been lit and appeared very
welcome, too, what with the evening dews and damps. It was then that
the two CCs began to look around; so did the soldiers. “Odd sound,” said
the Margrave. “Sounds like what they call a locomotive engine; heard one
once,” said the Prince. Both together they said, “None here.” Indeed
there was not, and as there were yet none in either Graustark or Ruritania
either, hardly any of the soldiers had ever seen or heard one. But the
strange noise still persisted, like the transpirations or suspirations of an
alien creature; then the mists parted, the troops gave a great shuddering
cry, and the great setting sun bathed with its dull rosy rays the . . . the
what? There it was! . . . but what was it?

Answer was immediate. A young but zealous and excitable cavalry-
corporal cried, “It be the Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed
with the Sun,” possibly a reference to Katinka Ivanovna in her orange
outfit of satin and gauze; “Armageddon! The saints be casting down
their crowns a-nigh the glassy sea; re-PENTl” And, casting down his
brimless cap, he commenced beating his brow ritually and rhythmically
with his fist as he chanted an immensely long Recital of Remorse, ranging
from Assembling to Commit Fornication with Two Other Stable-boys
and a Tavern Wench; down to Zedoary, a Great Quantity of Which I
Snitched From an Apothecary to Buy Booze.

Pandemonium in the ranks.

Bearing down at them from an altitude as yet unestimated was A T hing,
hideous beyond belief, something like (were it possible) an immense
aerial insect, although with more body sections than any insect could
possibly have, or had it? was that its giant thorax moving in and out? was
it merely the wind? were those things jutting out here and there wings?

Eszterhazy-Autogondola 59

Or were — could they be — fins? Was this all some dreadful dream in the
declining day? Was that a Scythian-Pannonian-Transbalkanian flag? Oh
Hell and Purgation yes it was! — also a perfectly dreadful voice from the
heavens barked orders at them and as they milled around in confusion
and in terror. The Thing swooped and swerved and darted and hissed at
them with its scalding breath —

Military marksmanship had nowhere included shooting at a' steam-
propelled Autogondola way up in the middle of the sky, nor had anyone
been trained to fire at a 35-foot long bird; and though Margrave Grau-
heim was an excellent stag-hunter, he had never had occasion to hunt a
giant stag 100 feet above him: who had?

^'Halt!" cried that dreadful voice from the heavens. “Halt! Fall ini
Stack arms! Officers, prepare to surrender your swords at an oblique
angle! Thrusting the right foot one foot forward and taking hold of the
right trouser-leg with the right hand: Ex-pore . . . HOSE! Sergeants of the
3rd Graustark Chasseurs, take the names of those officers wearing green
striped stockings, daresay they patronize the same haberdasher in Port
Said, what do you mean by wearing green striped stockings at a formal
surrender, you dumb sons of bitches!” There was no disobeying that
dreadful voice in the sky, and when a battalion of Ruritanian Regulars
attempted to sneak away, the Autogondola sailed along their line of
cook-fires {lovely up-drafts!) and dropped what were really not howitzer
shells but boxes of Brunk-stuff right into the fires; the confected fuel at
once pulverized and exploded, sending hot pilaff flying just about every-
where; also the Prince Rupert-Michael was almost struck by an aerial
grenade which very oddly left his coat smelling like a rather low-grade
champagne; funny.

It was with a complete mixture of humiliation, fear, and relief that they
heard themselves being let off with a mere fine for “Having Entered into
the Disputed Areas Without the Conjoint Consents of the Emperor, the
Sultan, the Woywode of Western Wallachia and the Grand Mameluke of
Neo-Macedonia, to the Great Affront of All of Them”; the fine being,
well, never mind what the fine being, and officers of flag rank were
ordered to take it in large bills from the Pay Chests and drop it into the
basket now descending to eye-level; no sooner was the basket filled than it
was zipped up out of sight again and a voice with a strong American
accent was heard counting its contents.

The implacable Voice from above now announced that torches be lit
and that all Ruritanian troops at once march for Graustark and all
Graustarker troops march at once for Ruritania: they marched. Long
after the huffing-puffing creature had ceased to snuffle and hiss back and
forth checking on them, breathing redly in the dark, they kept on march-
ing. They didn’t dare not.

The Autogondola descended to take on water and conserve fuel by

60 AMAZING

resting in the deserted camp forthe night.

The World Tribunal has long been occupied with the cases of Grau-
stark vs. Ruritania and Ruritania vs. Graustark.

Meanwhile, back at the Palace:

Ignats Louis, Emperor of, etc., etc., was gloomily taking his post-
breakfast walk in the Gardens when a figure detached itself from a rake,
and, bowing, asked permission to speak. Granted. “Guess what I seen
this mornin a-comin to work. Your Imperialness?” “Tell me, Genorf.
We know you wouldn’t lie . . . not to We, anyway.”

Genorf, I. Pal. Gard. Rakeman, Upper Div., said that in coming to
work that morning he passed close by the Old Fair Grounds at usual and
was surprised to see there on dry ground a boat like with red sails like.
And then come along this red-haired woman Gazinka Somethingovna,
what they say she’s a witch and in she got to the boat and with no more
about it off sailed the boat only it like sailed m/> . . . in the very general
direction of Wallachia or Macedonia or Graustark maybe or Ruritania
rather: and might she lay a curse on all them foreign folk and drive their
he-goats mad. Or worse. . . Apology to Your Presence, Sire . . . But,
now, what might you think? About such witchery . . . ?”

His Royal and Imperial Presence thought about it, stroking his bifur-
cate beard right-side, left-side. Then he said, “Well, We’ll tell you,
Genorf. Them country witches such as they had when We was a boy, they
was good enough to dry up cows or cure the clap, but nowadays things
keep getting more modern and we must move with the times.” And as a
reward for the information, he was Graciously Pleased to direct that
Genorf be given a large bowl of suet dumplings plus six and a third
skillings plus a big glass of shnops. “And to make certain it be good
shnops, come. We’ll have one with thee; come to think of it, all of ye have
one with We,” Ignats Louis sometimes had difficulty with his pronouns;
“and if the Frow High Housekeep’ don’t like the smell, tell her to hold her
nose as she drinks it: Graustark and Ruritania, oh haw haw! We can’t wait
to hear!”

Avar-Ister, Second Capital of the Triune Monarchy (there really was
no “Third Capital”), had gone to bed in a rather ugly mood. Not only
were traces of some awful bad gunk coming down the Ister from the
general direction of the First Capital, but the Post Office had just gotten a
new issue three-pennikk stamp (one and one-half pennikks being equal to
two-thirds of a copperka, except . . . but we had perhaps leave that for
now) of which the Avar legend lacked a Silent Letter . . . the incomparable
richness of the Avar idiom containing many silent letters. Avar National-
ites at once revived the traditional cry of, “Are we going to stand for

Eszterhazy-Autog6ndola 61

this?” with its terrifying reply of '‘Nudgeszemeldinkelfrasz!" or (in Avar)
No. Tom-toms did not precisely beat all night, but — Shortly after
sunrise, well, to be perhaps needlessly blunt, conveniently after break-
fast, a concourse of Avar Patriotic Intransigents began to move grimly
along the Korszo towards the Viceroy’s Castle: when, suddenly from
behind a cloud was heard an Angel’s Voice singing the Pannonian
National Anthem. Not realizing that it was aaually the voice of Katinka
Ivanovna Dombrovski — she had learned it in Zagreb one bleak winter
from an Avar exile who, whenever she slacked learning it, pinched her,
severely — the Avars naturally stopped dead. And stood at full attention,
only turning their heads to watch the Autogondola-Invention fly the full
length of the Korszo from east to west, joining in the singing of the first 35
verses; then, the Autogondola-Invention having unaccountably gone into
reverse, turning their heads to watch it fly the full length of the Korszo
from west to east backwards, joining in the singing of the second 35
verses: who was not there to hear Madame K. I. Dombrovski render the
moving lines:

“Hoy, Pa-n-no-ma, hoy!

Yoy, Pa-n-no-ni-a, yoy!

O-oy, Pa-n-no-ni-a, oy!”

in full coloratura, has not heard anything.

But must not all things come to an end? Yes.

It was whilst prolonging the final, poignant, patriotic, oy that the voice
of Katerina Ivanovna went briefly hoarse . . . then flat . . . then cracked . . .
then gave out entirely. And it was at that moment that the Autogondola-
Invention suddenly went completely out of control and made what may
be called, to coin a phrase, a “crash-landing,” on the top-deck of the R.
and I. Lighthouse Tender Empress Anna-Gertruda, fortunately without
anyone being injured . . . and with it steamed upriver towards Bella. The
cheering Avars then all went back home to put hot compresses on their
stiff but patriotic necks.

Who would ever know? . . . but somehow Dr. Eszterhazy, having
reflected much upon it during free moments of his aerial tour, thought he
now understood more of the Mystery of the Goats. There being no tax on
the she-goats, there was no need to conceal them. As for the he-goats,
they being needed only during breeding-season, why it was they who
were herded up into the far wild pastures in the mountains in hopes of
avoiding the tax-collectors — and it was evidently only there that the
hallucinatory plants grew — nightshade! traditional in witches’ brew!
— As for the attested reports of the strange music (surely not upon
pan-piptes!?), one must simply, mentally, stamp it: unsolved. Eszterhazy

62 AMAZING

might suggest the goat-tax be reduced and its revenues equalized by, say,
a fourth-pennikk tax a case on refined sugar, which peasants never used
anyway, preferring honey or sorghum or brown sugar-loaf; doubtless
then the he-goats would be kept down out of the danger zone. He could
suggest. More than that he could not do.

Meanwhile —

Engelbert Eszterhazy, Ph. D., aspirant D. Sc., was entertaining guests.

“. . . the new fuel caused a build-up which choked all the tubes
eventually,” Professor Gronk was complaining. Eszterhazy said that the
two of them could really call on poor old Brunk shortly and show him how
to filter the sludge washed off his soft coal, and re-filter and so on until the
wash-water was clear enough to let back into the river. And then they two
would work out with Brunk a better formula for mixing the coal dust and
sawdust and whatever into a really decent fuel . . . : “For stoves, anyway.”

The professor made a gesture. His prominent eyes swiveled all about.
“It is not alone the fuel. The design is wrong I see now. The wires snap.
The aerolines flap. The framework does not stand the strain. The
Autogondola- Invention does not properly take the helm. The instru-
ments, jyojy meinDieu the instruments: I must tell you that not only half
the time we really used the wind and not the engine but half of that time
the instruments proved there was no wind to use! Seemingly, it should
never have flown at all! It is as though some witchcraft or magic — ”

Eszterhazy-Autog6ndola 63

Eszterhazy stroked his moustache. He looked pensive. “The old magic
and witchery is almost everywhere in retreat, Professor. Only here at
almost the very edge of the European world does it ever turn and fight.
Elsewhere it masks itself and tries to sneak in via the medium and the
planchette, but that is not quite the same magic. Nor the same witchery.
Well. Eh? ‘The Autogondola-Invention will take years more study and
work?’ Well, meanwhile let us keep it quiet. It is clearly something for
which the world is not yet prepared. Have you tried the sausage? It is . . .
there." The Professor’s floating eyes ceased to float, concentrated on the
sausage. In a moment he had left his host behind.

Instantly the place was taken by Burgenblitz of Blitzenburg; never had
the Doctor seen the Baron so voluble. “The castle is doomed, Eszterhazy;
the day of the fortress in the forest is over; this little adventure has shown
me that anyone may put a motor on a balloon and float over dropping
explosives anywhere, so what good’s a castle if you can’t defy the world
from it? Well, I’m selling out. Yes. Giving up. Shall go hunt crocodiles in
La Florida by the waters of the T allahassee and the great Se wanee; my pal
Pard has been persuaded to act as guide for the most modest of fees out of
which he himself shall pay the native — what? Sioux? — to paddle us in
their — what? Wigwams? — as I believe the catamaran is called in its
native language; we shall go by way of London where the best crocodile-
gun and mosquito-netting is made, also to purchase tomahawks, beads,
and red cloth to trade with the Crackers as I believe the picturesque
aboriginals are also called. ...”

Eszterhazy’s eyes met those of Washington Parthenopius “Pard”
Powell, who let his own eyelids slip to half-mast and drew a puff on his
calumet. To have the Baron Burgenblitz actually out of the country for
even whatever length of time was a gift of fortune hardly to have been
looked for. “Ah Burgenblitz how I envy you,” he said. “The castle-
fortress. Indeed. Doomed.” It had, like the walled city, indeed been
doomed: since 1453; Burgenblitz was a slow learner. “Hm, crocodiles.
Florida, hm. You will not of course wish to hunt the great saurian all the
time. Y ou would be bored. Fortunately in La Florida there is the legend-
ary life of the planter to occupy and amuse you as well. I believe I have
read a report that the soil there is excellent for the possible cultivation of
the Comparatively Thin-Skinned Yellow-Green Juice Orange, of which
cuttings are said to be available at the Botanical Gardens in Kew; pray
mention my name to Mr. Motherthwaite, the Curator for Juicy Fruit.
Ah. La Florida! You will buy lands there, eh?”

Burgenblitz, who had never once considered doing so, now cried, “But
yes of course I shall! That is ... I hope . . .” he turned to his pal, Pard,
“ . . . will the picturesque aboriginal Crackers trade land for red cloth?”
His pal Pard once more gave Eszterhazy a glance from his glaucous eyes. “Be
tickled pink to trade it for most anything,” said he. “Money, marbles, or
64 AMAZING

chalk.”

Burgenblitz drew out his pocketbook to make a note. “The money is no
problem,” he said. “As for the marbles, we shall pick up some at Carrara,
and I am sure that at Dover we shall be able to procure chalk.” As the two
of them walked off, deep in talk, Pard Powell was heard to say that when
he was in Honduras with William Walker, treacherously executed to
death by the people he had come to liberate, William Walker was often
heard to say that any man could plant wheat and shoot birds but more
than anyone was to be admired a man who could plant orange trees and
shoot crocodiles.

The gaslight hissed. There, suddenly, laughing at him, was Madame
Dombrovski. A sudden retrospeaive vision of her clinging now to one
rope aloft, now another: had he seen her fingers moving deftly, swiftly,
through the ropes’ ends? . . . and if so why? Why . . . seemingly, it should
never have flown at all! “Ah, Katinka Ivanovna. Tell me. Are you really
Russian? Polish? Or — ”

“ ‘Rilly’? Rilly, I am Rahshian Feen. Often corned famous Lbnnrot to
my Grandfather house in Karelia, collecting kalevala', why ease eat you
ask?”

He tweaked his nose. “Oh . . . No particular . . .Tell me. Have you ever
heard it said that many ‘Russian Finns’ are witches and warlocks? That
they are said to be able to raise and direct the wind by tying knots in ropes,
or even by singing . . . ?” But merely she looked at him, her blue eyes
merry and bright. Then she laughed, and, laughing, moved on. Move on.
As host, he, too, must ... In the group nearest-by were several of the
young liberals, intellectuals and sceptics. What were they talking about?
Not, certainly, about the price of hog-lard, still staying calm and steady at
17 ducats, seven skillings the hundredweight — at home, that is; it was
reported to have reached such astronomical proportions in Siberia owing
to an outbreak of hog-cholera that the peasants were obliged to eat butter.

“No, no,” said one, shaking his head. “The hope of education as an
adjunct to popularism is a vain one. Why, only now, even now, stories
appear that the bulls in T ransbalkania are no longer savage and have been
seen and heard dancing to strange piping music with wreaths and gar-
lands round their necks! Peasants who believe such stories are not yet
ready to vote. No no.”

And said another, adjusting his pomaded moustache, “Yes, and the
papers encourage that sort of thing. Look, here in today’s evening paper.
Report from the Rural Districts, listen to this, it’s being said that a country
girl near Poposhki-Georgiou saw a bull with a wreath of flowers round its
neck and she climbed up to get it and then the bull ran off with her still
clinging to its back. . . .”

“Silly girl!”

“What was her name; it wasn’t Europa I suppose?”

Eszterhazy-Autogondola 65

“No it wasn’t; what kind of a name is that; it certainly isn’t good
Scythian Gothic, what?”

The one with the newspaper gave it a second look. Said, “Olga.”

“O/ga?”

“See right here in the paper: Olga. Here.”

“Zeus and O/ga? Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as — ”

His friend shrugged. “Oh well. Other times, other mirrors.”

Eszterhazy felt he liked this, came closer.

“What chap was it who said, nature always holds up the same mirror,
but sometimes she changes the refleaions?”

The other sipped from his glass of bullblood wine while he considered.
“Don’t know who said it. You’re sure somebody said it? Weil, it’s either
very profound or very silly.”

They sipped and talked as they moved on to the quaint buffet; this
fellow the Doctor their host, was he carrying his Love of the People too
far? . . . head-cheese, sausage, now, really! — And then suddenly a hand
was held up for silence. “Oh listen! You can hear the bell of the ten
o’clock tram down the road, last one till five tomorrow morning, best
hurry! Be hard to find a cab if we miss the tram.” Even in Bella,
sophistication too had its pains and costs.

Down in the street. “Thank you. Doctor Eszterhazy! Oh it was indeed
a pleasure. Doctor Eszterhazy! Good night! Good night! Engelbert!
’Night, Engli . . . !”

For some while he remained there, simply enjoying the mist around the
lamplights; suddenly a commotion, there on the next corner was someone
shouting and waving his hands and screaming for a fiacre. It was
Signor Gian-Giacomo Pagliacci-Espresso. “The Central Station! At
once! A fiacre-cab! Pronto!” Would one stop for him, no, one would not,
very odd considering the local libel that fiacre drivers “would drive the
Devil to mass for a ducat,” was this surprising? Considering that in one
waving hand the wealthy wine-bottler held a stiletto and in the other a
pistol, perhaps not.

Then, too, it was late.

On recognizing Eszterhazy, the man shouted, “Katinka Ivanovna, that
slut, that buta, she has left me, she has eloped either with Baron Burgen-
blitz or the Far-vestem Yankee poet Pard, I do not know which — ”

To himself, Eszterhazy murmured, “Perhaps both;” but aloud he
spoke so sympathetically he persuaded the man to replace the weaponry
of vengeance and to come up to Eszterhazy’s chambers for a soothing
dr'nk, instead. Sobbing softly into his astrakhan coat-lapels, he agreed.

And so, by and by, once again all was quiet in front of the hotel in the
little square at the bottom of the Street of the Defeat of Bonaparte
(commonly called Bonaparte Street).

And overhead shone the glittering stars.

66 AMAZING

AT TWEIMTY=FD¥li

The author has been the editor of Analog Science Fiction
and of Omni; but he has recently retired to Connecticut
to pursue a full-time writing career.

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, will be
twenty-five years old in October of 1 983. Over the course of this quarter-
century, in the eye of many a beholder, the space agency has all too often
been a victim of its own success.

Even before there was a space program, most Americans tacitly
assumed that the first steps into space would be taken by the United
States. After all, it worked that way in all the science-fiction novels and
movies, didn’t it? When the Russians put up Sputnik I, October 4, 1957,
the shock to America was traumatic — especially for those of us who were
working on the Vanguard program, which had been billed publicly as
“man’s first step into space.’’

We knew that the Russians had bigger rocket boosters. We knew that
they intended to launch satellites. And we knew, better than anyone else,
how frail the entire Vanguard operation was. But knowing and believing
are two different things. We were just as stunned as everyone else when
Spumik went into orbit.

NASA was created by Congress in October 1958, and America played
catch-up for almost ten years. But once President Kennedy established
the clear goal of reaching the Moon, the U.S. space program moved
steadily ahead. On July 20, 1969, the most extravagant adventure the
human race had ever undertaken culminated before the eyes of more than
a billion television watchers as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface
of the Sea of Tranquility.

The Apollo program cost some $23 billion. To most taxpayers, the
success of Apollo looked so easy that they began to think of it as a huge
technical stunt. “The Moondoggle,’’ it was called. Why were we spend-
ing so much money on space when there were so many pressing needs
here at home? The Soviets, once they realized they were going to finish
second in a two-man race, cleverly told the world that they had never
intended to send men to the Moon anyway; the race was a figment of
Washington’s imagination.

By 1972, President Nixon could scrap the Apollo program. The nation
was preoccupied with Vietnam and Watergate. Some 400,000 jobs were
lost when Apollo was killed, and an estimated two million indirea jobs
went down the drain with them as once-thriving space communities in
Florida, Alabama, and Texas shrank drastically. The whole national

NASA at Twenty-Five 67

economy started to slide badly, in part because the economic payoff of
Apollo was still several years down the road.

Today, one of the few bright spots in the sluggish American economy is
the electronics industry. Tens of billions of dollars worth of computers,
calculators, multi-function wristwatches, videogames, and other micro-
miniaturized electronic gadgetry were sold around the world last year
alone. The jobs and profits from this new industry have already repaid the
money invested in Apollo.

But these are invisible payoffs, as far as the average taxpayer is con-
cerned. There is little or no connection in the public’s mind between
today’s vigorous elearonics industry and the space technology that
spawned that industry.

Through the 1970s, public interest in space operations hit bottom,
mainly because there were so few manned American space missions.
Skylab put astronauts into orbit for up to three months at a time, but
ended in an embarrassing fiasco when the 90-ton space vehicle plunged
back to Earth. The joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975 was a brief fling at
ditente in space, but it accomplished little more than a weightless hand-
shake between Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and Astronaut Thomas
Stafford (both of whom are now generals in their respective services).

The scientific exploration of the solar system produced a steady stream
of spectacular successes through the 1970s and early ’80s. Unmanned
spacecraft visited Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Two
Viking landers probed the red soil of Mars for signs of life in 1976.
Voyagers I and II sent back breathtaking piaures of giants Jupiter and
Saturn and their dozens of moons. Yet the public’s excitement over these
triumphs was as short-lived as the hoopla that comes when the circus
arrives in town.

But all through the 1970s, out of the public’s eye (for the most part)
NASA was building the space shuttle, the vehicle that has ushered in the
second phase of the space program.

Phase I was exploratory, experimental. Almost every mission was a
first, a dramatic flight into the unknown. The scientists and engineers
have explored much of the solar system, and tested their machines and
teams of skilled people. Now, in Phase II, we will see the beginnings of
the real payoff: new industries, new resources, new economic benefits are
coming to us from space.

Just as the decision to “go for the Moon” was crucial to the develop-
ment of an organized, focused space effort in the 1960s, the decision to
develop a re-usable space shuttle has focused NASA’s work through the
1970s — to the detriment of all other programs, it must be admitted.

For nearly a decade now, just about half of NAS A’s annual appropria-
tions have been poured into the space shuttle. Space scientists such as
Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray have repeatedly pointed out that the

68 AMAZING

money spent on the shuttle could have launched hundreds of unmanned
probes to the Moon and planets, returning an incredibly rich harvest of
new knowledge. Other development programs in aeronautical and space
technology, programs that could lead to new breakthroughs in aircraft
design or space equipment, have suffered funding droughts.

Dr. Murray recently resigned as head of the Jet Propulsion Labora-
tory, the part of NASA that directed the highly successful Pioneer,
Viking, and Voyager missions. As Murray put it, “A funny thing hap-
pened on the way to the outer planets. While the (planetary explorers)
functioned relatively smoothly in space, circumstances in their terrestrial
birthplace were not so harmonious. . . . NASA plans for a smooth
transition to the reusable space shuttle were dashed by schedule delays
and burgeoning costs. All planetary launches . . . became dependent upon
timely development of the shuttle and upper stages.”

But NASA’s decision has remained firm. The shuttle comes first.
Period. To paraphrase the late Vince Lombardi’s attitude, “The shuttle
isn’t the most important thing. It’s the only thing.”

And just maybe NASA’s decision is right. For the shuttle, with its
30-ton payload capability, can carry people and payloads into space on a
regular, routine basis. Once all four of the government-funded shuttles
are built and operating, flights into orbit could take place on a weekly
schedule. Satellites and space probes that are larger and more complex
than anything yet designed could be hauled into orbit by this space-going
“truck.”

“The real importance of the space shuttle,” says NASA’s Administra-
tor, James Beggs, “is that in a few years we are not going to conduct any
spaceflights without people going along: that transcends everything
else.”

The NASA budget for Fiscal Year 1983 reflects Begg’s thinking. Of a
total requested budget of slightly more than $6.6 billion, a little more than
half — nearly $3.5 billion — will go to the Space Transportation System,
NASA’s organizational title for the shuttle program. By contrast, space
sciences will receive only about fifteen percent of the total NASA fund-
ing, slightly more than $1 billion.

This means that most of the scientific projeas already started have
been chopped out of the budget completely. Among them are:

The mission to intercept Halley’s Comet in 1986, and sample the
primordial gases of the comet’s tail. Russia, Japan, and the West Euro-
peans will send probes to Halley’s Comet; the US will not.

The International Solar Polar Mission (ISPM), which would have
sent two spacecraft around the north and south poles of the Sun, to study
the structure of its magnetic fields and provide data on how the Sun’s
seething aaivity affeas the climate and the magnetic field of Earth. Since
ISPM was to be a joint mission with the European Space Agency, the

NASA at Twenty-Five 69

American cancellation particularly upset the West Europeans, who are
left with one-half of a mission.

The Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar (VOIR), which would have put
a radar-mapping satellite into orbit around Venus, the planet which is
perpetually covered by thick clouds heavily laced with sulfuric acid.

As Dr. Murray put it, “A brilliant burst of American imagination and
energy, catalyzed by the Apollo decision, carried our sense and intellect
. . . outward beyond Saturn — but has now nearly run its course.”

Two major science projects remain in the NASA plan. One of them is
the Galileo program, which will send spacecraft back to Jupiter, the
largest planet of the solar system. An orbiter will allow scientific studies
of the massive giant and its moons over many months, rather than the
fleeting hours provided by flyby craft such as Voyager. And a probe will
be sent into Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, to penetrate below the
clouds and send back data from a region where no human eye or instru-
ment has yet been.

Galileo was almost cancelled by the Reagan Administration, but cries
of protest from the scientists, from NASA’s own administrators, and
from the general public — enthused by efforts such as Dr. Sagan’s Cosmos
series on public television — saved the project.

Perhaps the most significant science projea of them all is the Space
Telescope, which will be carried into orbit aboard the shuttle in 1985.
Small astronomical observatories have been orbited in the past; but the
Space Telescope is a major chunk of equipment, a 94-inch reflecting
telescope — its size alone puts it among the dozen largest astronomical
telescopes in the world.

Placing it in orbit, however, makes this device the most exciting
instrument since Galileo originally turned his hand-made telescope to the
heavens, in 1609. The Space Telescope will orbit about 300 miles above
the Earth. No clouds or smog or city lights will degrade its ability to see
the universe. Astronomers who have spent lifetimes cursing the weather
or the encroachment of urban lighting and the vibration of highway-
borne traffic, will finally have an instrument in a domain where these
problems are far behind them.

The astronomers will remain on Earth. Astronauts will check out the
telescope once it has been lifted out of the shuttle’s payload bay. Other
astronauts will visit the telescope reguarly to service it and change some of
the sensing instruments attached to it. NASA even plans to bring the
telescope back to Earth at intervals of perhaps five years to refurbish it,
and then take it back into space again. (Only the 30-ton payload capacity
and re-usability of the space shuttle allows such flexibility.)

In space, the telescope will be able to detect types of “light” that cannot
be seen on the ground. The Earth’s atmosphere shields us from most of
the forms of radiation emitted by the Sun and stars. We see the small slice

70 AMAZING

of the spearum that we call visible light. A little infrared and a bit of
ultraviolet leaks through as well, and some frequencies of radio waves get
through the ionosphere to reach the ground. But 300 miles up, the Space
Telescope will be able to pick up the full range of electromagnetic
energies : all the infrared, ultraviolet, gamma, and x-rays that the universe
throws at us.

Riccardo Giacconi, direaor of the Space Telescope Science Institute
at Johns Hopkins University, has pointed out that the Space Telescope
will uncover so much new information that it will force astronomers to
build new ground-based facilities to follow up the discoveries made in
space.

Because it is above the obscuring effeas of the atmosphere, the Space
Telescope will be able to see seven times farther into the cosmic dark than
any ground-based instrument. It may penetrate to the very edge of the
observable universe and show astronomers how the universe began. It
may be able to detect whether or not there are planets circling the nearby
stars, and settle the debate as to whether our solar system is a rare, unique,
or commonplace cosmic occurrence.

But although Galileo and the Space Telescope are exciting, ambitious
projects, they are the only major science efforts that NASA is currenly
funded to undertake. At a total project cost of S750 million, fifteen
percent of which is being provided by the West Europeans, the Space
Telescope is perhaps the biggest bargain in the history of space science.

Meanwhile, NASA’s concentration on the shuttle has opened new
opportunities both for the Agency itself and for would-be competitors,
both domestic and foreign.

The government is committed to building four shuttles. Columbia has
demonstrated the soundness of the design. Challenger, carried past Presi-
dent Reagan last July 4 atop a Boeing 747 on its way to Cape Canaveral,
will be followed by Discovery and Atlantis.

Every cubic inch of payload capacity for these four shuttles has been
assigned to users, through the next several years. Nearly half the payloads
will be military; the Air Force is constructing its own shuttle launching
facility at Vandenberg AFB in California. The remaining payload spaces
will be split almost evenly between scientific and commercial payloads,
such as communications satellites.

But there are many more commercial customers than the fleet of four
shuttles can handle. Companies such as RCA, AT &T and Western Union
want to orbit commsats. Oil companies want satellites that will search for
natural resources. Johnson & Johnson is working on developing new
pharmaceuticals based on zero-gravity chemistry. John Deere, the farm-
machinery manufacturer, is working with NASA on zero-gravity metal
processing.

Already some American firms, disappointed because they can’t “get

NASA at Twenty-Five 71

aboard” the shuttle, have taken their satellites to the European Space
Agency. ESA has developed a rocket booster, Ariane, and a multinational
company, Arianespace, specifically to launch satellites at a price competi-
tive with NASA’s. Ariane is an expendable booster, like the Titans and
Deltas that NASA is now phasing out. But as long as the shuttle cannot
handle all its potential customers, and Arianespace’s prices remain attrac-
tive, Ariane will be competing with NASA’s shuttle.

Other competition is rearing its head in Texas and New Jersey. Space
Services Inc., of Houston, had its first successful test launch in August
from Matagordo Island, off the Gulf coast. SSI, with strong links to
Houston’s oil industry, plans to be launching satellites for profit in a few
years.

Space Transportation Inc., of Princeton, NJ, has a more ambitious
plan. Headed by Klaus Heiss, the econometrician who did an economic
analysis of the shuttle for NASA in the mid-1970s. Space Transportation
has proposed to the government to raise a billion dollars, which will be
used to build a fifth shuttle — to be devoted entirely to commercial and
industrial missions. One of the proposal’s major financial backers is the
Prudential Insurance Company.

When insurance companies such as Prudential and Aetna (which is a
partner in the Satellite Business Systems Corp., together with IBM and
Comsat Corp.) get into the space aa, it is time to admit that space has a
powerful business potential.

The initiation fees are steep. A billion dollars to build a shuttle. Seven
hundred fifty million for a space telescope. A NASA budget of S6.6
billion, slated for an increase to over S7 billion in Fiscal Year 1984.

But consider the returns. Communications satellites alone are a billion-
dollar business in the US, with more billions being made overseas. The
entire “micro-chip revolution,” from personal computers to industrial
robots, has benefited mightily from space-generated technology. In 1981
alone, Americans bought S9 billion worth of videogames — a commercial
bonanza that began in the need to miniaturize elearonic equipment for
space missions.

Within the next five years, we will see private boosters putting satellites
into orbit, for profit; exotic medicines manufactured aboard the space
shuttle; the opening of a new era in astronomy as the Space Telescope
turns its eye to the heavens; the Galileo probe on its way to Jupiter; and a
report from distant Voyager II as it passes the planet Uranus, some two
billion miles from Earth.

All this on a NASA budget that equals about one week’s worth of
spending by the Department of Defense, or roughly the cost of three
offshore oil platforms. For the truth is that NASA’s funding is among the
smallest items in the federal budget. A few years ago, the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare (now renamed Health and Human Ser-

72 AMAZING

vices) shamefacedly admitted that it had lost some five billion dollars in
one year due to faulty accounting procedures. Americans spend more
than the annual NASA budget on pizza each year, and more than ten
times that amount on used cars.

As the space agency nears its twenty-fifth birthday, it once again finds
itself beset with the problems caused by success. The shuttle is working
well, which raises the thorny question of who will operate it in the future.
Should NASA, which is essentially a research and development agency,
become the operators of an orbital bus line? Should the shuttle be handed
off to another governmental agency, or should private enterprise take
over its operation? There are strong advocates of each position. Some
have even suggested allowing the Air Force to run the entire shuttle
program, both its military and civilian sides.

And what of the growing militarization of space? What role will NASA
play vis-a-vis the Air Force’s newly-created Space Command? Already
the Air Force’s space budget is bigger than NASA’s, and the Reagan
Administration is committed to increasing the military space budget by
ten percent per year over the inflation rate.

The next twenty-five years will see wonders as diverse as the Space
Telescope, permanent habitats in orbit, and the development of indus-
tries in space that will open up thousands of new jobs on the ground. The
difference between Phase I of the space program and Phase II is that now
NASA’s work is beginning to have a direct, immediate, and percep-
tible impact on the national economy. The space program has come a long
way, baby. But there’s still an entire universe out there waiting to be
explored and utilized.

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NASA at Twenty-Five 73

“My old grand-mere, were she here and had she thought of
it, might have said: ‘Don’t you believe anything you hear
and only half you see.

. . . William Claude Dunkenfield

Harry had this little routine he did when he first walked on — little soft
shoe, after the band breaks into way down upon the da-de-de-dum, and
they throw a blue pin-spot on Harry up there dancing around, twirling
with his arms straight out, light as a feather — this would be some strip
joint in Philly, a place with eight bouncers, and you’d hear some catcalls,
but mostly they didn’t even pay attention at first. Like who wanted to
watch some old rumdum fake a soft-shoe routine?

And the way he did his dance — half-serious, half-falling-down-on-
his-ass — should’ve told them something, but mostly they never picked
up on it. By the time he’d gone maybe a minute, you could see them
starting to get restless, shifting around in their chairs a little, and Harry
was right with it, little shuffle here, little shuffle there, and he knew just
when to signal for the houselights.

Sometimes, there were only twelve people in the audience — three
nights in Albany, then a one-nighter in Schenectady, and it was always
the same: they either sat out there like bumps in the dark, or they started
shouting things, with the special undertone of ugliness you find in joints.
Harry danced, and smiled, and maybe ended with a back shuffle or a
half-hearted flying scissors and a feigned split. Then the lights came up,
and that’s when they first saw the tank.

You see a tank, you figure it’s some kind of escape act maybe, where
they tie the guy up in a straight jacket, chain him and padlock the chain,
then he’s got two-and-a-half minutes to get out of the tank, which is filled
with water, or else he drowns, and I’ve seen acts like that but mostly
they’re illusions. I even managed an act like that once: a Hungarian who
thought he was another Harry Houdini. By the time they were putting the
chains on him, he was already practically out of the straight jacket, then
they put him in a steamer trunk and dropped him into a vat. It wasn’t a
bad act, but the Hungarian thought he should be playing bigger rooms so
he fired me. When I first saw Harry Gandy, I thought it was another
escape act. Most people do.

The tank had a plaque attached to it: PROPERTY OF HARRY
GANDY. A stamp on the side said ‘Heathrow’. It was about three by five
by three-high, and after his dance, Harry walked upstage and took a big,
exaggerated bow — which usually got him groans and boos — then he
threw back his right hand, put his toe forward like a carnival barker, or, as
the King was known to observe, — “like a ringmaster.” The King, of
course, had a thousand Gandy stories in him but none better than his
imiiniion of Harry’s opening spiel, as Harry, in his ringmaster’s posture,

7ft AMA/.IN(i

called out, “Ladieees and Gentlemen, I am Harry Gandy, the World’s
Greatest Evolutionary Mimic. I know that none of you knows what an
evolutionary mimic is, any more than you appreciate an acceptable soft
shoe when you see one, which, I regret to say, you have not as yet been
given the opportunity to do — still, that experience remains for you! You
are about to witness a most unusual event. It may appear to be a fatal
situation but I assure you, it is not.”

Drum roll.

“Too soon for the drum roll,” Harry would say, holding up his hand.
“What you see before you is an ordinary glass tank,” Harry strolling over
toward the ladder, “filled with a special solution consisting of primordial
slime, coffee, free-neutron-emulsion and other ingredients whose names
and properties I am not at liberty to divulge having learned them from the
lips of a dying man — a monk in the region of northwest Rajputana who
had sworn secrecy on the souls of a thousand sacred cows — ” little tap
dance up the first two steps of the ladder, back down again, and the
houselights start to dim, and Harry says, ‘Wow the drum roll,” dancing
up the ladder. “Y ou are about to see, Ladieees and Gentlemen, a soft shoe
with a different sort of finale.” By this time the drunks at the bar, and
even the strippers backstage, are craning their necks, and people are
looking around poles, and the waiters have stopped, and everything is
quiet, and the smoke is drifting up through the blue pin-spot as Harry
does one more little move, a kind of half-toe-tap-shuffle-pass, and then
he pulls off the little jumpsuit thing he was wearing and holds it out into
the spot, which is now trained discreetly away from his nakedness, then
he slides down into the slime and disappears.

“The first time I saw it,” the King said, “he was almost booed off the
stage because heiiidn’t start to melt right away.”

That right there was enough to make you wonder. Harry claimed he
actually melted in the slime. You couldn’t see him in there. The stuff was
inky green and smelled to high Heaven, and Harry told everybody to stay
away from the tank while his act was in progress — as a safety precaution,
he said. He was doing three performances on Saturday in those days
— two on Friday. He wouldn’t work any other days. Said it was too tiring.
The first time I saw it, he sloshed around in the tank for about five
minutes, then he melted. It was a bunch of sailors, and they were about to
tip over the tank when Harry melted. You should have seen that. One
threw up and the rest ran out of the joint. I phoned Freddie Levine in
New York and Freddie bought the act unseen. I’ve been in the business
thirty-one years, and guys like Freddie Levine take my word. I told him
he’d never seen anything like it. It gives you an idea of what kind of man
Freddie Levine was, God rest his soul.

The King, of course, remembered it otherwise. Magicians, he claimed,
had done things like Harry’s act, and sometimes you saw things in

Gandy Plays the Palace 77

carnival sideshows, still, it wasn’t the same. He spoke wistfully about it.
Said it was compressing a dozen billion years into forty minutes.

“I told Freddie Levine I had an act to end all acts, and he said he didn’t
even want to hear about it. I could fill him in when I got to New Y ork. He
sent me a ticket, and one for Harry, but Harry wouldn’t go. At first, he
didn’t think he needed a manager. Then I asked him if he wanted to play
strip joints and fire traps the rest of his life, and he asked me who my
connections were, and I told him, and we shook on ten per cent, but he
still wouldn’t go to New York. He told me to take care of it, so I did.

The King didn’t care about that part of it, of course. He would sit on his
folding chair with his legs crossed, black silk stockings and ridiculous
silver shoes, with that long, bored look on his face — or maybe he would
read a Racing Form, and try to choke down another cup of coffee so he
could stay awake.

He’d heave and sigh and say: “Harry was happy on the Philadelphia-
Buffalo circuit. He went to Florida every winter for a couple of weeks,
made enough money to live on — he was stupid to go big time.”

The King didn’t like to think about it. He hated being king like Harry
Gandy hated playing club fights as the opening attraction — or freak
shows, or small rooms. The King was bored all the time, and so he talked
about Harry Gandy and tried to imagine how bored Harry Gandy must
have been, doing his act for a bunch of unappreciative slobs who had no
idea what they were seeing. The King tended to identify with Harry
Gandy, as if it doubled his capacity for enduring boredom — he hated
being king because all he had to do was push a button, and somebody
would bring him whatever he wanted. He’d get an evil grin, and walk over
to his desk and push the button. In roughly three seconds, Randolph
would be there in his nice dark suit. Randolph is the King’s personal
secretary. “Randolph,” the King would say, “I want to know the name of
the guy who killed his wife in front of three thousand people at the
Hippodrome. He was a knife-thrower. He claimed it slipped, but the cops
and the audience thought otherwise. And, find out if he’s still alive,
Randolph. If he is, I want him brought here so I can talk to him. If he’s
still in jail, find out how much it will cost to get him out.”

Or the King would get a strange look on his face, and he’d say, “Time
for a General Security Alert,” and he’d push another little button on his
desk. Sirens would go off everywhere, and you could hear men shouting,
flying machines whirring around. The King would stand by the window
picking his teeth, watching the bedlam.

I told him once: it might be bad having poison testers and bodyguards,
but you’re still king. All you have to do is push a button and you can have
anything you want.”

“Do you know what it proves?” he said.

“What?”

78 AMAZING

“Some people are never satisfied.”

Like Harry Gandy.

All he ever wanted to do was play the Palace. He said it was because no
act like his had ever gotten that far, and Harry had this thing where he had
to prove his claim about being the world’s greatest evolutionary mimic.
We used to argue about it all the time. “How can you not be the greatest
when you’re the only one?” He didn’t see it that way. Harry always said
he wouldn’t give up until he played the Palace.

“That’s when we knew he had to be stopped,” the Right Reverend J.C.
Profitt said.

He’d set up a duck blind for his remote truck, in a parking lot on the
ground of the International Bratwurst Festival where Harry was headlin-
ing, and he was going to broadcast the whole thing, live. Harry’s tank was
on a platform in the middle of the rodeo grounds, and there were two or
three thousand people in the stands.

It was still in the days when they thought Harry was a freak act
— everybody but the Right Reverend Profitt and his radio flock, who
were convinced Harry was the devil. Profitt was trying to get the Queen
on the phone for a live interview, but she wouldn’t come to the phone, and
so he had to content himself with describing what happened after Harry
disappeared inside the tank. This was probably about four months before
Harry played the Palace.

Harry was a little nervous before the show.

He got started a little late, and the green ooze didn’t start forming in the
tank until almost two o’clock. J.C. Profitt was curing a man of a fistula.
Harry’s cassette was blaring on the loudspeakers: THE GREEN SLIME
NOW FORMING IN THE TANK WILL GRADUALLY CON-
DENSE INTO TWO HELICES. THESE WILL APPEAR AS GE-
LATINOUS FIBER. Profitt interrupted his cure and started shouting,
“A giant green tinkertoy! He’s made himself into a giant green tinker-
toy!” WHAT YOU SEE HERE, the tape blared, IS THE FORMA-
TION OF A TYPICAL AMINO ACID.

“Jesus, God be praised,” Profitt screamed so loud that he was getting
feedback, a terrible, mind-bending screech, and engineers were stum-
bling out of his remote truck holding their ears, and everybody in the
stands was looking over toward the parking lot — they missed Harry’s
next move.

A WORKING MODEL OF A ROTIFER, which J.C. Profitt called
a seamonster. In this, the twin spirals abruptly transform themselves into
a single football-shaped thing with long strands of green hair flowing off
it like limbs, and he swims around that way for a minute or so, or maybe
gets going around the edge of the tank like a motorcycle in a barrel. It
usually gets their attention.

Gandy Plays the Palace 79

The next trick is introduced by Harry on the cassette while the band
blows a fanfare — crowd buzzing like crazy by now as the rotifer has
disappeared and a new shape begins to take over the tank — WHAT
YOU SEE NOW, Harry’s voice somewhat obscured by the crackling of
the speakers, IS MY IMPRESSION OF ONTOGENY RECAPITU-
LATING PHYLOGENY — drum roll — WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT
TO SEE IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE OF THE EXTREME TIME-
DILATION EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE PRESENCE, IN
MY PRIMORDIAL SOLUTION, OF FREE NEUTRONS, A
GREAT MANY MORE THAN YOU WOULD ORDINARILY
EXPECT TO FIND. I AM ABLE TO ORGANIZE EVOLUTION-
ARY TRENDS AND COMPRESS WHAT MIGHT HAVE
OTHERWISE TAKEN A LONG TIME INTO A VERY SHORT
TIME — Drummer’s cue to break the drum roll — This is the new trick
he’s been saving for J.C. Profitt. The band has broken into “Happy Trails
to You” as Harry comes suddenly out of the slime tank, a man on a horse
waving his hat — which has the crowd silent in stunned disbelief, but
Harry can’t quite make it past the posterior of the horse, so what you have
is Harry, trying to wave his hat, with the horse slowly drowning face-first
back into the primordial ooze while his rear end is way up in the air —
finally, the whole thing collapses back into the slime.

He told me after the show it was something he had to work on.
Somebody was banging on the door of Harry’s trailer saying that the
Queen wanted to interview him over the radio. Wasn’t that just like the
Queen? Except Harry didn’t believe it. He told them to tell her he was too
sick to talk to her. He said his head felt like a watermelon. This time two of
them came. They wanted to see Harry, so I let them in.

“Are you Mr. Gandy?”

Harry just looked at them.

“The Queen would like to ask you a couple of questions, Mr. Gandy, if
you feel up to it.” Another man came up the stairs and into the trailer. He
was carrying a small piece of elearonic equipment.

“Mr. Gandy?” It was the voice of the Queen coming out of the
electronic equipment. The man was holding it away from him, like it was
a lantern. “Can you hear me, Mr. Gandy?”

Harry was stretched out on the bed, facing them. Except for a towel
around his middle, he was naked.

“Hello?” the Queen said.

Harry had his feet up on a pillow and his hands behind his head, and he
was sound asleep. The Queen kept saying “Hello — ?” and then they lost
the connection. When they got it back again, the Queen was telling them
to wake Harry up, as nicely as possible. Then he was sitting up, clearing
his throat — “I’m ok. I’m ok.”

“Mr. Gandy?”

80 AMAZING

“Yes?”

“That was marvelous!”

“Thank you.”

“Are you a magician, Mr. Gandy? An impressionist? A necromancer?
That marvelous trick with the horse — what do you call that?”

“Roy Rogers and Trigger — except Trigger’s tough. Today was the
first time I ever tried it. Sort of an unprofessional finish there,” Harry
said.

“We thought it was part of the act,” the Queen said. She was obviously
enjoying herself. The Queen likes to be where things are going on. She’s
always been that way. “What’s in the tank? Nobody seems to know.”

“Cosmic dross.”

“Cosmic dross?”

“Free neutrons, deoxyribonucleic acids, organic molecules, and about
five dozen other things.”

“Marvelous. Is it magic or technology, Mr. Gandy?”

“Magic?”

“You have detractors, Mr. Gandy — ”

“I’m sure,” Harry said.

“ — who say that you are — an illusionist. Do you plead guilty? Before
you answer, I think you should know we all think you’re marvelous, and it
doesn’t matter to me if you’re an illusionist or not. Some magicians, Mr.
Gandy, make rabbits appear from hats, and some walk across hot coals,
and some ride in limousines, and when you get down to it. What isn ’t an
illusion? ”

This brought a smattering of applause from everybody in the trailer
except Harry, being one of those little observations the Queen gave for
free in her conversations, and subject to the acknowledgement of ap-
plause, or, at least, murmuring and a shuffling of feet. “What is it, Mr.
Gandy? Are you an illusionist?”

“I am the World’s Greatest Evolutionary Mimic.”

“I don’t doubt it,” the Queen said. “And the matter then is one of
technology? I concede it. That is all tricks anyway, and I wouldn’t dream
of probing a professional secret. Good luck to you, Mr. Gandy.”

“Good luck to you, Madame,” Harry said.

You had to look at the whole thing from her perspective. Being queen
wasn’t easy. They expected her to know what everybody wanted and how
to give it to them, and sometimes they wouldn’t believe they wanted
something no matter how many times she told them they did.

It wasn’t easy deciding what they were allowed to watch and listen to,
but it was the Queen’s job. She got there by being a necromancer like
Harry Gandy, and she always bounced back. The Queen knew the trick.
All you had to do was see it happen first in your mind — then make it
happen.

Gandy Plays the Palace 81

I tried to explain it to Harry that way.

“You and the Queen have been doing the same tricks for years, Harry.
She tells them what to think: you tell them what to see.”

“Stop trying to be a philosopher, Leo,” Harry said. “You’re a theatri-
cal manager. Stick to what you are. There aren’t many guys today making
a living as philosophers. You get me booked into the Palace, Leo — for
the right money.” Everything for Harry was always the right money,
except that Harry didn’t care about money at all. He’d learned to live with
a minimum supply, and he liked living that way.

“The King was the necromancer, Harry — I’ll tell you something, you
have to look at it from the King’s point of view. He’s the one who taught
the Queen.”

“The King’s dead, how can I look at something from his point of
view?”

“When he was alive, Harry — you’re still dealing with her, and that’s
the same as dealing with him because she’s learned all his tricks. I’m
talking about getting you booked into the Palace, Harry. Don’t think that
just because she talked to you on the radio that she’s automatically going
to invite you to play a command performance. That’s not the way it
works. Any money is the right money for the Palace, Harry, and don’t
forget it.”

“I played him once, you know.”

“The King?”

“Tall, steel-blue eyes, erect — nice tufts of grey hair around the
temples, and that rolling-thunder voice: nobody ever looked more like a
king. He was a treacherous bastard, from what they say — started out as a
disc jockey in Des Moines, Iowa. It’s a famous story.”

“Y ou’re like talking to a stone wall, Harry. I want to tell you something
— The Queen needs a hot act right now. Three of her new shows were
cancelled last week, and all she has on the drawing board are tap-dancing
dolphin acts and more game shows like “Life and Death.” She needs a
hot act right now. Something different. The Queen won’t just book you
into the Palace. She’ll have some angle, some controversy, some flap that
will take the whole thing out of the ordinary. That’s her style, Harry. She
doesn’t believe in technology or magic. She believes in ratings. Right
now, J.C. Profitt is hot. He’s signed on for two more on-the-air miracles
this summer, and there’s talk about a spectacular out of New York, like
maybe he was going to try walking the East River: and I’m not talking
about across it. I’m talking about up and down. Don’t let her sic him on
you. Don’t underestimate her, Harry. She’ll use you up like toothpaste
and throw you away when she thinks you’re done.”

Harry’d look at me, after one of my little speeches, and he’d say
something like: “You got a nice turn of phrase, Leo. You ought to be
writing soap operas.” Talking to Harry was like talking to a stone wall.

82 AMAZING

Things were quiet for a while after the Bratwurst Festival. I went back
to New York on business, and Harry got burned out and had to cancel a
couple of small shows, and all we got were people wanting to sign us to
debate J.C. Profitt in Yankee Stadium on the subject of Darwinism
— usually in the public interest (which meant no money). I didn’t even
bother calling Harry before I turned them down.

Then it came:

TO HARRY GANDY C/O LEO DUNNEMAN, DUNNEMAN PRODUCTIONS, NEW
YORK, NEW YORK. DEAR LEO: WARM REGARDS.

YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED TO PRESENT HARRY GANDY TO THIS
COURT NINETY DAYS HENCE, TOGETHER WITH HIS TROUPE AND PROPS OF
ENTERTAINMENT, WHERE HE WILL CONDUCT HIS SHOW FOR THE PLEASURE OF
THE QUEEN IN HER PALACE.

I called Harry to tell him about it, and all he could say was, “What’s the
money?”

“The money doesn’t matter, Harry, we’re talking about playing the
Palace. You’ve got three months to get something spectacular together. If
you’re a hit, it’s a new ball game, Harry. No more car dealer con-
ventions.”

“What’s the money?”

“I don’t even know. If somebody offers you tickets to the Second
Coming, Harry, you don’t ask how good the seats are.”

“That means the money’s lousy, doesn’t it, Leo?”

“One of her technical people called me this morning. They need to
know some technical things. Maybe you and I can sit down with them for
ten minutes and — ”

“What technical things?”

“Something about colors — for the cameras and all that. We can get it
straightened out in five min ”

“What about colors}"

“How should I know, Harry? The guy was talking about colors. He
wanted to know what color your slime solution was — for some light
meter check he’d be doing — ”

“You tell him, Leo. I don’t want to talk to anybody’s technical people.
Tell him the muck is green, and tell him I said it was because the free
neutrons cause the light coming off it to be green-shifted. If he wants to
know more than that, tell him it’s a professional secret. If those bastards
want to learn how to green-shift light, let ’em start from scratch like I
did.”

“This isn’t Ted Mack we’re dealing with here, Harry. This is the
Queen. They want a little technical information. This is the big time,
Harry, you got to bend a little.”

“What’s to bend? If it was that easy, Leo, everybody’d be doing it.”

Gandy Plays the Palace 83

“And the Queen wants to meet you face to face — to talk about
promotions. She seems to think this thing has a great chance if it’s
promoted right.”

“What kind of promotions?”

“She didn’t say.”

We didn’t know what to expect getting off the plane in New York and
sliding into the Queen’s personal limousine, which was waiting for us at
the airport. There wasn’t a peep about Harry in any of the trade journals,
and nobody gave us a second look in the elevators or in the waiting room
of the Queen’s New York offices. Harry was nervous, and I was scared.
She kept us waiting for about twenty minutes, then we were led through a
labyrinth of plush, colorful offices, and into a large conference room with
a long, gleaming oak table. The Queen was wearing huge silver earrings
and a white silk lounging outfit that must have cost her fifteen grand. She
looked just like her pictures. There were about fifteen people sitting
around the table, and she introduced us to every single one of them and I
forget all of their names, except one, Schmutz, which belonged to a large
woman who never smiled the whole time Harry and I were there.

“How do you feel about hype, Mr. Gandy?” The Queen said. She’d
put on her glasses and lowered her voice.

“Hype?”

“Building a public anticipation for your show with a media blitz.”

“I suppose it has its place,” Harry said. “I don’t have much use for it
myself”

This caused the Queen to smile.

“We are apparently dealing with a scientific matter here, Mr. Gandy
— or so I am advised. It is my own feeling that a hype-blitz may not
necessarily be appropriate for such an event. A majority of people at this
table feel otherwise. Mr. Dunneman has already expressed his feelings to
me in a telephone conversation, and yours is the only opinion I don’t
know, Mr. Gandy. Mr. Dunneman and most of my associates feel that we
should consider giving it an extensive publicity campaign. They think it
would be the most effective way of assuring a large share of the viewing
audience. What do you think, Mr. Gandy?”

“I guess it depends on how you look at it.”

“Ordinarily, a Palace Special can expect to garner about forty-three
percent. Mrs. Schmutz tells me that with the right kind of hard-core
exposure, we might run that as high as forty -eight or forty-nine, and her
point is well taken. Still, a great deal depends on the slant of the blitz.
What is it exactly that you do, Mr. Gandy? Are you a freak show? A magic
act? I know — you say you are the World’s Greatest Evolutionary Mimic,
but none of my staff seems to know precisely what that means. Don’t
misunderstand me, if the matter is truly scientific, I wouldn’t exploit it as mere

84 AMAZING

theatre for the sake of five or six percentage points of rating — this would
be a direct violation of one of my own programming edicts. I have no
intention of repeating my mistake with the Reverend Dr. Profitt and his
prime time religious miracles, Mr. Gandy. They have become a dismal
failure in the ratings. People especially disbelieve miracles they can see
with their own eyes, Mr. Gandy. They would rather watch nude mud-
wallowing from Ramona Beach.”

She paused ever so easily.

“Which brings me to my point; I cannot slant the blitz until I know
what Tm peddling, Mr. Gandy, and I don’t know what I’m peddling. If I
can’t slant the blitz, then I can’t try for the extra percentage — it would be
too big of a gamble — and doing it without a slant would be suicide
— unless we let the word out that we had something speaacular but
didn’t say what it was, but the problem with that is that too many people
around the county have seen your act already, and all it would take would
be a couple of well-placed bad reviews of one of your earlier performances,
and we’d be blown out of the water, lucky to get thirty-five per cent. I
don’t need any more disasters in prime time, Mr. Gandy. Until I know
what I’m selling, I don’t know how to sell it. Simple enough. If there is a
scientific explanation for it, then we’ll need to know what it is. If the
explanation is mystical, fine! Magical, great! Nobody can tell me that but
you, Mr. Gandy. Does that give you some appreciation of my position?”

Harry smiled. “The explanation is scientific, Madame, in part; and
mystical — if you believe, as I do, that mysticism is merely another form
of illusion. I have dressed the act in illusion, but the core of it you would
have to call it scientific. Are you familiar with lightcones?”

“Lightcones?” The Queen shot a glance at one of her associates, a small
Chinese man, who smiled and nodded.

“The neutrons, in sufficient quantity, have the effect of slowing the
propagations of lightcones from the immediate vicinity of the slime
tank,” — Chinese man smiling — “When the solution reaches its first
stabilization. I’m speaking about — also, free neutrons drastically alter
the speeds at which the necessary chemical reactions take place within the
primordial solution itself. Once the material has reached its second
stabilization, and I am sufficiently melted into it, my consciousness
having been retained intact as a series of preprogrammed quantum
exchanges, I am at what I call the first critical stage of the trick. My stage is
set because I am propagating light at a vastly diminished rate — to all
intents and purposes. I’m not propagating light at all during the first few
nanoseconds of this first critical stage, because the free neutrons have
green-shifted the light to center spectrum, and I appear dissolved in the
slime, and the slime appears to be green. Also, I have learned by practice
to organize the various molecular configurations by thinking about what I
intend to become — ”

Gandy Plays the Palace 85

The Chinese man stopped smiling when he heard the word, just as
Harry said he would. The man next to the Queen whispered in her ear,
and then she said, “Green-shifted?”

“I’ve learned to green-shift light.”

The Chinaman was chuckling.

“Because of the extreme time-dilation at the surface of the neutron
solution, at the first critical stage, an ordinary evolutionary process,
which might take a few hundred million years to develop fully, takes only
a few seconds at the least, minutes at the most, depending on the complex-
ity of the trick — ”

“My advisors tell me that this is the sheerest nonsense, Mr. Gandy,”
the Queen said.

Harry smiled.

“A trick like Roy Rogers and Trigger might take two, two-and-a-half
minutes to think through — you’re dealing with two impressions instead
of one, a great deal of borrowed mass from the solution, plus animal
movements are clumsy and unnatural. First I’m confused about where I
am, no sensory input at all — then I remember, and I start concentrating
on whatever impression I’m going to do. Like with Roy Rogers and
Trigger, I think about horses: how they developed from , those little
two-foot tall statuettes of prehistory. When I’m learning the trick, I hang
around barns, feed the horses, groom them, get a feel for them. Then I
think about that particular horse, gold, with that white mane — then I
think about Roy Rogers sitting up there on top waving his hat.”

“How do you evolve a hat — or one of those cowboy shirts? Or spurs?”

‘T’ve never been real sure about that part of it,” Harry said. He was
standing looking out the window, picking his teeth. “The thoughts are
represented by the quanta — somehow they signal the solution to form
things from its chemical components, to fit the quanta patterns with
counterpart green-shifted photon records of the event unfolding in space-
time — the latter being what the audience ultimately sees.”

The Chinaman was chuckling, shaking his head. Mrs. Schmutz was
still scowling at Harry.

“My staff seems to think this is utter nonsense, Mr. Gandy,” the
Queen said.

“The question, Madame, is not whether it is utter nonsense. The
question is: will people pay ten bucks a head to watch it?” Harry raised his
eyebrow, gave her a little of that old vaudevillian’s smile.

“We live in a technological time, Mr. Gandy. How’s this? The disci-
pline of evolutionary mimicry is not fully understood. Some people
— The Right Reverend J. C. Profitt, for example — believe that it is a
discipline founded in mysticism. Some, including its chief practitioner,
believe that it is governed by natural law. We challenge you, Mr. Gandy.
We challenge you to enlighten us with your performance. If what you do

86 AMAZING

is science for the sake of entertainment, then entertain us if you must, but,
above all, enlighten us. However you do it, let it be for more than Roy
Rogers and Trigger. We’ll let the public decide if you’ve succeeded. We’ll
publish a challenge, and your acceptance — you do accept, Mr. Gandy?”

“I accept, Madame.” Harry was giving her more eyebrow.

“A man with your capabilities could do no less, Mr. Gandy — and that
will be our slant on the hype, gentlemen. I’m looking forward to this, Mr.
Gandy — was there anything else?”

There was nothing else.

Harry said you had to view the world in a radically different way if you
wanted to be an evolutionary mimic. When we got to the Palace, I saw
what he meant. Whoever designed it loved auditoriums in a way no
ordinary person could ever hope to understand, and his translation of that
love was the most acoustically and visually perfect arena ever devised by
man.

The official cost figures were never released to the public. Several
authoritative estimates are available, and the most authoritative of those
places the cost of the Palace at an amount equal to nineteen per cent of the
national debt; and if you ever saw it, five minutes before a show when it’s
filled with people and that vital hush has fallen over it, and the flashbulbs
are popping, and everybody is rattled with anticipation, you would say
the money was well-spent.

More people involve themselves with watching a Palace show than any
other prime time activity except sex — yet the cameras are up and out of
sight, and everything else is tucked away, and the openness of the place
imparts a loneliness to it. The light and sound are all such that it’s
impossible not to be mesmerized, and you have no sense that anybody but
you is watching — in fact, you’re convinced of it, and the whole thing, for
me. Was a very strange experience.

Harry’s tank was inthe middle of a ball of light and Harry was standing
next to it, hidden from the cameras by a Japanese screen. He was wearing
a new tuxedo.

At exactly eight o’clock, the spotlights dropped to the Queen’s Royal
Box, and she stood, and when the audience had quieted down, gave her
little speech about the challenge, as if all the hype hadn’t been enough.
Then she introduced The Right Reverend J.C. Profitt, whose views on
matters of evolution and the Divine Creation were well known, then the
Chinaman, whose views on the scientific feasibility of evolutionary mim-
icry were well publicized, and when everything was good and charged,
she raised her hand, then gestured toward the stage and said, ‘‘Ladies and
Gentlemen — The World’s Greatest Evolutionary Mimic — Harry
Gandy!”

More applause, spotlights following the Queen’s eyes to the center

Gandy Plays the Palace 87

stage where Harry bounds out, gingerly, waving to the audience. The
Queen has remained standing in the custom of the command perfor-
mance, and Harry, as is the custom, bows to her, and lifts just a glimmer
of a smile when she returns the bow and eases into her seat.

Houselights down, blue pin-spot on Harry, a full symphony orchestra
glides easily into view on risers, playing Limehouse Blues which is Harry’s
favorite song, while Harry begins the first dips of his old soft shoe and
starts to straw hat and cane it up the ladder. All the blue light makes it
look like he’s suspended inside a water bubble, and Harry, off the ladder
now and standing in the active cone of an invisible boom mike, says, “We,
you and I, all of us, are made of stuff. The odds against us being here
together as the precisely indicated combination of stuff we were meant to
be, are incalculably high — yet here we are. And, as long as we are. I’d like
to do a few impressions for you.”

With that, the lights drop altogether, and when they come up again,
Harry is poised above the tank. He lifts an eyebrow and four kettle players
begin a slow, rumbling drum roll. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Harry says as
he slides feet first into the muck, “a little sample of life’s Dionysian
dance.” Then he’s gone, and the cameras cut away for a commercial.

When they come back, Harry’s tank is bathed in pure emerald light,
and everybody in the world not engaged in sleeping or sex is watching.
First, Walt Whitman, a tattered old man by that time, up out of the slime
reading [lom Leaves of Grass while the orchestra plays selections from the
atonal music of Chester White, and the audience sits, spellbound,
— then, still in the one-man show tradition, a giant Rhea, flopping
around, beating its wings against the glass while the audience gasps in
disbelief — then a politician, a rock singer and Mickey Mouse, with the
music going like crazy to keep up, and a new, more spectacular lighting
arrangement every two minutes — and after an hour, the audience is in a
state of continuous appreciation and the applause rises and falls with each
new trick, like surf pounding, and the Queen is standing, applauding and
cheering with the rest of them when the tank finally settles down into a
pre-finale quietude. And there is another commercial break.

Like everybody else, she sits and watches as Harry comes once more up
from the green slime, and, this time, climbs out of the tank, down the
ladder, still a shadow, and then the lights are up, and there he is, tall and
straight, steel-blue eyes, and those unmistakable tufts of grey at the
temples — he is there, clear and sure, the way he was before he got sick
and old, and died, and the Queen stands, for an instant, as if to protest,
then smiles, unnoticed, and begins to cheer and clap with the rest.

The audience is standing, and there is tumultuous joy at the prospect of
what has happened, and they believe it. They believe Harry Gandy is lost
in the tank forever, and no amount of scientific persuasion could convince
them otherwise.

88 AMAZING

He walks briskly down the stairs to greet her, that tall, erect figure, and
with a perfectly fitted tuxedo three sizes larger than Gandy’s own, and the
Queen knows that somewhere upstairs, fifty thousand telephone calls are
flashing on the boards with people wanting to know what they have just
seen, and the ovation takes on new energy with every step he takes toward
the Royal Box, spotlights following him.

The rules forbid it, of course — to approach her without leave that way
— but the Queen cannot stop it, and when she looks around, she sees
nobody has noticed the breach of etiquette, if that’s what it is.

When he gets to the Royal Box, he smiles, bores into her with with his
royal blue eyes, and leans near her to whisper, so that only the Queen out
of all the world can hear — I’m too far away to read his lips, and with the
lights and excitement, can’t even see his face, but I know what he says
because he told me he would: “King me, Madame,” — with that old
vaudevillian’s charm. And there is nothing for the Queen to do but
smile.

Gandy Plays the Palace 89

TRADITIONS

by Eric G. Iverson

art: George Barr

Eric G. Iverson is an expert in Byzantine history and,
apparently, the more technical aspects of being a vampire.

90 AMAZING

The noble families of the Duchy of Strymon have their own traditions,
centuries old. The barons of Kypros eat no mutton. The counts of Geta
marry — and divorce — at the church of Mistra, though the Pechenegs
left it a tumbledown ruin when they sacked Mistra two hundred years
before. The chevaliers of Lazica like boys (how there get to be more
chevaliers of Lazica is widely wondered; their wives, it is said, know).
And a vampire always kills the counts of Sirmion.

For generations no one, including the counts, gave the matter much
thought. They were usually allowed to live to a ripe age, and it was an
easier death than most. But the end met by Constans, the twelfth count,
changed all that. The vampire caught him with his tights down in the
garderobe of Castle Sirmion, and drained him dry.

The thing could not be hushed up; the fiend struck during an evening
feast poor Constans was giving for his neighbors. Valerian, a wandering
scholar on his way to the ducal court, had been shifting from foot to foot
in front of the locked garderobe door before the baron of Rashka, driven
by a bursting bladder, kicked it down. “Oh, dear me, how most ex-
tremely unfortunate,” Valerian exclaimed when he saw the husk that
had been Constans.

As he showed at the door, Rashka was more direct. “Scratch another
one!” he cried as he staggered back to the dining-hall. He was very drunk,
but many people thought the remark in poor taste.

Constans’s grown son Manes vowed revenge for his father. The situa-
tion had become worse than dangerous for him now; it was embarrassing.
“Traditions have a start,” he declared, “and they can have an end.” The
thought shocked his neighbors, but he went ahead with his vampire-hunt
regardless. “The beast shall not have me, nor my own little son either,” he
said, shaking his fist in the air.

Valerian begged leave to accompany him on his hunt. “For,” he said,
“the vampire being a cacodaemon of greatest rarity, such an opportunity
to add to knowledge as to its haunts and habits arises all too seldom; a
tome concerning itself with such would surely be a desideratum of
highest import — ”

Manes rolled his eyes, “Come if you care to, but leave your bag of wind
behind.”

Armed with a great sharp stake, he prowled every ruined tower and fort
in his county; there were a great many of these, since the Pechenegs’ raid
had gone through the land in his five-times-great-grandfather’s time. In a
dank pile of gray masonry atop a lonely hill, he found a coffin of sandal-
wood lined with satin, with silken sheets and a pillow of softest goose-
down. Some of the art objects around it dated back centuries.

He burned everything. The sweet smell of sandalwood smoke filled the
deserted fort. “Let the monster’s sleep be hard,” he grated, “and let it
sleep while it may — soon enough it will sleep forever!”

Traditions 91

If he noticed that Valerian came away from the place with a golden
saltcellar he had not had when he got there, he said nothing. After that the
scholar was less eager to go a-hunting.

A driven man. Manes searched on. He found more of the vampire’s
lairs, though the first remained the most splendid. Every one saw the
torch. The last couple showed signs of hasty preparation, as though his
quarry had had to set them up after his scouring of the county began.

“Ha!” he said. “The trail grows warm!”

At last every ruin had been searched and, at need, cleansed. The
vampire was uncaught, the count undaunted. “I have routed it from its
accustomed haunts,” he said, “and now it must lurk by day in some
moldy hole in the ground, in swamp or forest. It cannot be well hidden;
by the gods, were it transparent as air it could not be well enough hidden
from me!”

He stormed into the woods with the best hunters — and poachers too
— of the county. “This is madness,” they muttered among themselves.
“How can an undead flitterer leave a trail?” But their mutters stopped
when they came across a stag with punctured throat. They beat the
bushes for a mile around it, but found nothing. Manes swore in frustrated
rage.

He swore again a few days later, when they happened on a crudely dug
hollow in the side of a bank. Greatly daring, he watched it all the night
through, but the vampire did not return.

When full moon came, it rose dark and ruddy in total eclipse. “A good
omen, that,” Manes said. “No doubt it foretells that the one who shed so
much blood will soon be extinguished himself.”

“I fear I must beg to differ with you,” Valerian told him. “You see,
lunar and solar eclipses can only take place when the full moon or the new
moon (respeaively, of course, you must understand) is at one of the nodes
where the plane of the lunar path through the heavens intersects the
ecliptic. As the full moon has met that condition, there is a strong
likelihood that in two weeks the new moon shall also be at the node, which
would portend — ”

But Manes was already walking away, tapping the side of his head with
a forefinger. “Miserable twit, thinks he knows omens,” he muttered.
“I’ve seen better heads on a beer than that one has, with his yattering
about nodes. As if I knew what a node was, or cared!”

He searched on through the forests day after day, carrying his stake in
both hands like a spear. Once each section was examined, he checked it off
on a parchment map of the county that hung over his bed. He had been
over most of the easier terrain and was plunging into harsher country,
second-growth land filled with tangles and brambles and bushes.

He came down into the castle forecourt and was outraged to discover
Valerian giving his huntsmen a dose of the same drivel he had had to

92 AMAZING

listen to a couple of weeks before. They were not grasping more than one
word in three, but they had caught enough to be frightened. “It might be
wiser to stay home today, sir,” the chief huntsman said nervously, “if the
gentleman here has the right of it. The day don’t seem to augur well.”
Behind him, the rest of the hunters nodded.

Manes stared at them in fury. “Well, aren’t you a load of worthless
milksops?” he roared. “Stay home, then — what do I need you for? With
the sun in the sky, the vampire’s no more than a corpse. And if I should
run into trouble. I’ll bloody well take this hero along to protect me.” He
seized Valerian’s skinny arm with a grip that made the scholar yelp.

The stretch of country he had chosen to search was particularly bad.
The light came dim and patchy through the tight cover of leaves over-
head, shining here and there on the damp, mossy ground in little cres-
cents. After the third thornbush scratched the count’s face, he almost
decided the vampire was welcome to the wretched place. The only thing
that kept him going was Valerian’s little whimpers as mosquitoes scored.

Then Manes sucked in his breath sharply — that was no shadow, there
not far from the edge of a little clearing; that was a black cape! He let out a
bellow of triumph. Almost he felt pity as he started across the open space,
the stake raised high over his head. He had run the vampire a savage hunt.
Endlessly harassed, driven from place to place, it had scarcely bothered to
dig itself a daygrave, making do with its cape, sadly threadbare now, as
cover against the fatal sunlight.

Not, the count thought, that there was much sunlight in this gloomy
wood. Nor even in the clearing — he looked up, startled, as the moon slid
across the last thin edge of the sun’s disc. The ghostly radiance of the
corona gleamed forth. The stars came out. A hush fell, as if of night.

Valerian broke it. “There, do you see? Exaaly the phenomenon to
which I referred. It — ”

Manes, though, was not listening. He watched in sudden dismay as the
cape stirred. Naked and grinning, the vampire rose. Even in the brief
darkness of the eclipse, its fangs gleamed. “Close, my friends,” it said,
“but not close enough.” It sprang forward.

The noble families of the Duchy of Strymon have their traditions,
centuries old. The fourteenth count of Sirmion is only six, but he knows
what to expect.

Traditions 93

CYBERPUNK
by Bruce Bethke
art: Bob Walters

Bruce Bethke lives in St. Paul MN with his wife Nancy and
an infant daughter, Emily. Beneath the exterior of a
businessman and computer professional there beats the heart of
an artist. His avocation is computer/ electronic music. And
now, here is his first published story. We wonder — what
would his talents in combination produce?

The snoozer went off at seven and I was out of my sleepsack, powered
up, and on-line in nanos. That’s as far as I got. Soon’s I booted and got
CRACKERS BUDDY BOO flERon the tube I shut down fast. Damn!
Rayno had been on line before me, like always, and that message meant
somebody else had gotten into our Net — and that meant trouble by the
busload! I couldn’t do anything more on term, so I zipped into my
jumper, combed my hair, and went downstairs.

Mom and Dad were at breakfast when I slid into the kitchen. “Good
Morning, Mikey !” said Mom with a smile. “You were up so late last night
I thought I wouldn’t see you before you caught your bus.’’

“Had a tough program to crack,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “now you can sit down and have a decent breakfast.”
She turned around to pull some Sara Lees out of the microwave and
plunk them down on the table.

“If you’d do your schoolwork when you’re supposed to you wouldn’t
have to stay up all night,” growled Dad from behind his caffix and
faxsheet. I sloshed some juice in a glass and poured it down, stuffed a Sara
Lee into my mouth, and stood to go.

“What?” asked Mom. “That’s all the breakfast you’re going to have?”

“Haven’t got time,” I said. “I gotta get to school early to see if the
program checks.” Dad growled something more and Mom spoke to quiet
him, but I didn’t hear much ’cause I was out the door.

I caught the transys for school, just in case they were watching. Two
blocks down the line I got off and transferred going back the other way,
and a coupla transfers later I wound up whipping into Buddy’s All-Night
Burgers. Rayno was in our booth, glaring into his caffix. It was 7:55 and
I’d beat Georgie and Lisa there.

“What’s on line?” I asked as I dropped into my seat, across from
Rayno. He just looked up at me through his eyebrows and I knew better
than to ask again.

At eight Lisa came in. Lisa is Rayno’s girl, or at least she hopes she is. I
can see why: Rayno’s seventeen — two years older than the rest of us —

94 AMAZING

Cyberpunk 95

he wears flash plastic and his hair in The Wedge (Dad blew a chip when I
said I wanted my hair cut like that) and he’s so cool he won’t even touch
her, even when she’s begging for it. She plunked down in her seat next to
Rayno and he didn’t blink.

Georgie still wasn’t there at 8:05. Rayno checked his watch again, then
finally looked up from his caffix. “The compiler’s been cracked,” he said.
Lisa and I both swore. We’d worked up our own little code to keep our
Net private. I mean, our Olders would just blow boards if they ever found
out what we were really up to. And now somebody’d broken our code.

“Georgie’s old man?” I asked.

“Looks that way.” I swore again. Georgie and I started the Net by
linking our smartterms with some stuff we stored in his old man’s home
business system. Now my Dad wouldn’t know an opsys if he crashed on
one, but Georgie’s old man — he’s agreentooth. A tech-type. He’d found
one of ours once before and tried to take it apart to see what it did. We’d
just skinned out that time.

“Any idea how far in he got?” Lisa asked. Rayno looked through her, at
the front door. Georgie’d just come in.

“We’re gonna find out,” Rayno said.

Georgie was coming in smiling, but when he saw Rayno’s eyes he sat
down next to me like the seat was booby-trapped.

“Good Morning Georgie,” said Raynoi smiling like a shark.

“I didn’t glitch!” Georgie whined. “I didn’t tell him a thing!”

“Then how the Hell did he do it?”

“You know how he is, he’s weird ! He likes puzzles ! ’ ’ Georgie looked to
me for backup. “That’s how come I was late. He was trying to weasel me,
but I didn’t tell him a thing! I think he only got it partway open. He didn’t
ask about the Net!”

Rayno actually sat back, pointed at us all, and smiled. “You kids just
don’t know how lucky you are. I was in the Net last night and flagged
somebody who didn’t know the secures was poking Georgie’s compiler. I
made some changes. By the time your old man figures them out, well . . .”

I sighed relief. See what I mean about being cool? Rayno had us
outlooped all the time!

Rayno slammed his fist down on the table. “But Dammit Georgie, you
gotta keep a closer watch on him!”

Then Rayno smiled and bought us all drinks and pie all the way
around. Lisa had a cherry Coke, and Georgie and I had caffix just like
Rayno. God, that stuff tastes awful! The cups were cleared away, and
Rayno unzipped his jumper and reached inside.

“Now kids,” he said quietly, “it’s time for some serious fun.” He
whipped out his microterm. “School’s off!”

I still drop a bit when I see the microterm — Geez, it’s a beauty! It’s a
Zeilemann Nova 300, but we’ve spent so much time reworking it, it’s

96 AMAZING

practically custom from the motherboard up. Hi-baud, rammed, rommed,
ported, with the wafer display folds down to about the size of a vid-
cassette; I’d give an ear to have one like it. We’d used Georgie’s old man’s
chipburner to tuck some special tricks in ROM and there wasn’t a system
in CityNet it couldn’t talk to.

Rayno ordered up a smartcab and we piled out of Buddy’s. No more
riding the transys for us, we were going in style! We charged the smartcab
off to some law company and cruised all over Eastside.

Riding the boulevards got stale after awhile, so we rerouted to the
library. We do a lot of our fun at the library, ’cause nobody ever bothers
us there. Nobody ever goes there. We sent the smartcab, still on the law
company account, off to Westside. Getting past the guards and the
librarians was just a matter of flashing some ID and then we zipped off
into the stacks.

Now, you’ve got to ID away your life to get on the libsys terms —
which isn’t worth half a scare when your ID is all fudged like our is — and
they watch real careful. But they move their terms around a lot, so they’ve
got ports on line all over the building. We found an unused port, and me
and Georgie kept watch while Rayno plugged in his microterm and got on
line.

“Get me into the Net,” he said, handing me the term. We don’t have a
stored opsys yet for Netting, so Rayno gives me the fast and tricky jobs.

Through the dataphones I got us out of the libsys and into CityNet.
Now, Olders will never understand. They still think a computer has got to
be a brain in a single box. I can get the same results with opsys stored in a
hundred places, once I tie them together. Nearly every computer has got
a dataphone port, CityNet is a great linking system, and Rayno’s micro-
term has the smarts to do the job clean and fast so nobody flags on us. I
pulled the compiler out of Georgie’s old man’s computer and got into our
Net. Then I handed the term back to Rayno.

“Well, let’s do some fun. Any requests?” Georgie wanted something to
get even with his old man, and I had a new routine cooking, but Lisa’s
eyes lit up ’cause Rayno handed the term to her, first.

“I wanna burn Lewis,” she said.

“Oh fritz!” Georgie complained. “You did that last week!”

“Well, he gave me another F on a theme.”

“/ never get F’s. If you’d read books once in a — ”

“Georgie,” Rayno said softly, “Lisa’s on line.” That settled that.
Lisa’s eyes were absolutely glowing.

Lisa got back into CityNet and charged a couple hundred overdue
books to Lewis’s libsys account. Then she ordered a complete faxsheet of
Encyclopedia Britannica printed out at his office. I got next turn.

Georgie and Lisa kept watch while I accessed. Rayno was looking over
my shoulder. “Something new this week?”

Cyberpunk 97

“Airline reservations. I was with my Dad two weeks ago when he set up
a business trip, and I flagged on maybe getting some fun. I scanned the
ticket clerk real careful and picked up the access code.”

“Okay, show me what you can do.”

Accessing was so easy that I just wiped a couple of reservations first,' to
see if there were any bells and whistles.

None. No checks, no lock words, no confirm codes. I erased a couple
dozen people without crashing down or locking up. “Geez,” I said,
“There’s no deep secures at all!”

“I been telling you. Olders are even dumber than they look. Georgie?
Lisa? C’mon over here and see what we’re running!”

Georgie was real curious and asked a lot of questions, but Lisa just
looked bored and snapped her gum and tried to stand closer to Rayno.
Then Rayno said, “Time to get off Sesame Street. Purge a flight.”

I did. It was simple as a save. I punched a few keys, entered, and an
entire plane disappeared from all the reservation files. Boy, they’d be
surprised when they showed up at the airport. I started purging down the
line, but Rayno interrupted.

“Maybe there’s no bells and whistles, but wipe out a whole block of
flights and it’ll stand out. Watch this.” He took the term from me and
cooked up a routine in RAM to do a global and wipe out every flight that
departed at an ;07 for the next year. “Now that’s how you do these things
without waving a flag.”

“That’s sharp,” Georgie chipped in, to me. “Mike, you’re a genius!
Where do you get these ideas?” Rayno got a real funny look in his eyes.

“My turn,” Rayno said, exiting the airline system.

“What’s next in the stack?” Lisa asked him.

“Yeah, I mean, after garbaging the airlines . . .” Georgie didn’t realize
he was supposed to shut up.

“Georgie! Mike!” Rayno hissed. “Keep watch!” Soft, he added, “It’s
time for The Big One.”

“You sure?” I asked. “Rayno, I don’t think we’re ready.”

“We’re ready.”

Georgie got whiney. “We’re gonna get in big trouble — ”

“Wimp,” spat Rayno. Georgie shut up.

We’d been working on The Big One for over two months, but I still
didn’t feel real solid about it. It almost made a clean if/then/else; z/The
Big One worked/r/?e« we’d be rieW else ... it was the else I didn’t have
down.

Georgie and me scanned while Rayno got down to business. He got
back into CityNet, called the cracker opsys out of OurNet, and poked it
into Merchant’s Bank & Trust. I’d gotten into them the hard way, but
never messed with their accounts; just did it to see if I could do it. My
data’d been sitting in their system for about three weeks now and

98 AMAZING

nobody’d noticed. Rayno thought it would be really funny to use one
bank computer to crack the secures on other bank computers.

While he was peeking and poking I heard walking nearby and took a
closer look. It was just some old waster looking for a quiet place to sleep.
Rayno was finished linking by the time I got back. “Okay kids,” he said,
“this is it.” He looked around to make sure we were all watching him,
then held up the term and stabbed the return key. That was it. I stared
hard at the display, waiting to see what else was gonna be. Rayno figured
it’d take about ninety seconds.

The Big One, y’see, was Rayno’s idea. He’d heard about some kids in
Sherman Oaks who almost got away with a five million dollar electronic
fund transfer; they hadn’t hit a hangup moving the five mil around until
they tried to dump it into a personal savings account with a $40 balance.
That’s when all the flags went up.

Rayno’s cool; Rayno’s smart. We weren’t going to be greedy, we were
just going to EFT fifty K. And it wasn’t going to look real strange, ’cause
it got strained through some legitimate accounts before we used it to open
twenty dummies.

If it worked.

The display blanked, flickered, and showed: TRANSACTION
COHPLETED - HAVEANICEDAY - I started to shout, but remem-
bered I was in a library. Georgie looked less terrified. Lisa looked like she
was going to attack Rayno.

Rayno just cracked his little half smile, and started exiting. “Funtime’s
over, kids.”

“I didn’t get a turn,” Georgie mumbled.

Rayno was out of all the nets and powering down. He turned, slow, and
looked at Georgie through those eyebrows of his. “You are still on The
List.”

Georgie swallowed it ’cause there was nothing else he could do. Rayno
folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.

We got a smartcab outside the library and went off to someplace Lisa
picked for lunch. Georgie got this idea about garbaging up the smartcab’s
brain so the next customer would have a real state fair ride, but Rayno
wouldn’t let him do it. Rayno didn’t talk to him during lunch, either.

After lunch I talked them into heading up to Martin’s Micros. That’s
one of my favorite places to hang out. Martin’s the only Older I know who
can really work a computer without blowing out his headchips, and he
never talks down to me, and he never tells me to keep my hands off
anything. In fact, Martin’s been real happy to see all of us, ever since
Rayno bought that $3000 vidgraphics art animation package for Lisa’s
birthday.

Martin was sitting at his term when we came in. “Oh, hi Mike! Rayno!
Lisa! Georgie!” We all nodded. “Nice to see you again. What can I do for

Cyberpunk 99

you today?”

“Just looking,” Rayno said.

“Well, that’s free.” Martin turned back to his term and punched a few
more in keys. “Damn!” he said to the term.

“What’s the problem?” Lisa asked.

“The problem is me,” Martin said. “I got this software package I’m
supposed to be writing, but it keeps bombing out and I don’t know what’s
wrong.”

Rayno asked, “What’s it supposed to do?”

“Oh, it’s a real estate system. Y’know, the whole future-values-in-
current-dollars bit. Depreciation, inflation, amortization, tax credits — ”

“Put that in our lang,” Rayno said. “What numbers crunch?”

Martin started to explain, and Rayno said to me, “This looks like your
kind of work.” Martin hauled his three hundred pounds of fat out of the
chair, and looked relieved as I dropped down in front of the term. I
scanned the parameters, looked over Martin’s program, and processed a
bit. Martin’d only made a few mistakes. Anybody could have. I dumped
Martin’s program and started loading the right one in off the top of my
head.

“Will you look at that?” Martin said.

I didn’t answer ’cause I was thinking in assembly. In ten minutes I had
it in, compiled, and running test sets. It worked perfect, of course.

“I just can’t believe you kids,” Martin said. “You can program easier
than I can talk.”

“Nothing to it,” I said.

“Maybe not for you. I knew a kid grew up speaking Arabic, used to say
the same thing.” He shook his head, tugged his beard, looked me in the
face, and smiled. “Anyhow, thanks loads, Mike. I don’t know how to . . .”
He snapped his fingers. “Say, I just got something in the other day, I bet
you’d be really interested in.” He took me over to the display case, pulled
it out, and set it on the counter. “The latest word in microterms. The
Zeilemann Starfire 600.”

I dropped a bit! Then I ballsed up enough to touch it. I flipped up the
wafer display, ran my fingers over the touch pads, and I just wanted it so
bad! “It’s smart,” Martin said. “Rammed, rommed, and ported.”

Rayno was looking at the specs with that cold look in his eye. “My 300
is still faster,” he said.

“It should be,” Martin said. “You customized it half to death. But the
600 is nearly as fast, and it’s stock, and it lists for $1400. 1 figure you must
have spent nearly 3K upgrading yours.”

“Can I try it out?” I asked. Martin plugged me into his system, and I
booted and got on line. It worked great! Quiet, accurate; so maybe it
wasn’t as fast as Rayno’s — 7 couldn’t tell the difference. “Rayno, this
thing is the max!” I looked at Martin. “Can we work out some kind
100 AMAZING

of. . . ?” Martin looked back to his terminal, where the real estate
program was still running tests without a glitch.

“I been thinking about that, Mike. You’re a minor, so I can’t legally
employ you.” He tugged on his beard and rolled his tongue around his
mouth. “But I’m hitting that real estate client for some pretty heavy
bread on consulting fees, and it doesn’t seem real fair to me that you . . .
Tell you what. Maybe I can’t hire youj-but I sure can buy software you
write. Y ou be my consultant on, oh . . . seven more projects like this, and
we’ll call it a deal? Sound okay to you?”

Before I could shout yes, Rayno pushed in between me and Martin.
“I’ll buy it. List.” He pulled out a charge card from his jumper pocket.
Martin’s jaw dropped. “Well, what’re you waiting for? My plastic’s
good.”

“List? But I owe Mike one,” Martin protested.

“Lirt. You don’t owe us nothing.”

Martin swallowed. “Okay Rayno.” He took the card and ran a cred-
check on it. “It’s clean,” Martin said, surprised. He punched up the sale
and started laughing. “I don’t know where you kids get this kind of
money!”

“We rob banks,” Rayno said. Martin laughed, and Rayno laughed, and
we all laughed. Rayno picked up the term and walked out of the store. As
soon as we got outside he handed it to me.

“Thanks Rayno, but . . . but I coulda made the deal myself.”

“Happy Birthday, Mike.”

“Rayno, my birthday is in August.”

“Let’s get one thing straight. You work for me.”

It was near school endtime, so we routed back to Buddy’s. On the way,
in the smartcab, Georgie took my Starfire, gently opened the case, and
scanned the boards. “We could double the baud speed real easy.”

“Leave it stock,” Rayno said.

We split up at Buddy’s, and I took the transys home. I was lucky, ’cause
Mom and Dad weren’t home and I could zip right upstairs and hide the
Starfire in my closet. I wish I had cool parents like Rayno does. They
never ask him any dumb questions.

Mom came home at her usual time, and asked how school was. I didn’t
have to say much, ’cause just then the stove said dinner was ready and she
started setting the table. Dad came in five minutes later and we started
eating.

We got the phone call halfway through dinner. I was the one who
jumped up and answered it. It was Gcorgic’s old man, and he wanted to
talk to my Dad. I gave him the phone and tried to overhear, but he took it
in the next room and talked real quiet. I got unhungry. I never liked tofu,
anyway.

Dad didn’t stay quiet for long. “He what?! Well thank you for telling

Cyberpunk 101

me! I’m going to get to the bottom of this right now!” He hung up.

“Who was that, David?” Mom asked.

“That was Mr. Hansen. Georgie’s father. Mike and Georgie were
hanging around with that punk Rayno again!” He snapped around to look
at me. I’d almost made it out the kitchen door. “Michael! Were you in
school today?”

I tried to talk cool. I think the tofu had my throat all clogged up. “Yeah
. . . yeah, I was.”

“Then how come Mr. Hansen saw you coming out of the downtown
library?”

I was stuck. “I — I was down there doing some special research.”

“For what class? C’mon Michael, what were you studying?”

It was too many inputs. I was locking up.

“David,” Mom said, “Aren’t you being a bit hasty? I’m sure there’s a
good explanation.”

“Martha, Mr. Hansen found something in his computer that Georgie
and Michael put there. He thinks they’ve been messing with banks.”

“Our Mikey? It must be some kind of bad joke.”

“You don’t know how serious this is! Michael Arthur Harris! What
have you been doing sitting up all night with that terminal? What was that
system in Hansen’s computer? Answer me! What have you been doing? !”

My eyes felt hot. “None of your business! Keep your nose out of things
you’ll never understand, you obsolete old relic!”

“That does it! I don’t know what’s wrong with you damn kids, but I
know that thing isn’t helping!” He stormed up to my room. I tried to get
ahead of him all the way up the steps and just got my hands stepped on.
Mom came fluttering up behind as he yanked all the plugs on my
terminal.

“Now David,” Mom said. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh?
He needs that for his homework, don’t you, Mikey?”

“You can’t make excuses for him this time, Martha! I mean it! This
goes in the basement, and tomorrow I’m calling the cable company and
getting his line ripped out! If he has anything to do on computer he can
damn well use the terminal in the den, where I can watch him!” He
stomped out, carrying my smartterm. I slammed the door and locked it.
“Go ahead and sulk! It won’t do you any good!”

I threw some pillows around ’til I didn’t feel like breaking anything
anymore, then I hauled the Starfire out of the closet. I’d watched over
Dad’s shoulders enough to know his account numbers and access codes,
so I got on line and got down to business. I was finished in half an hour.

I tied into Dad’s terminal. He was using it, like I figured he would be,
scanning school records. Fine. He wouldn’t find out anything; we’d
figured out how to fix school records months ago. I crashed in and gave
him a new message on his vid display.

102 AMAZING

“Dad,” it said, “there’s going to be some changes around here.”

It took a few seconds to sink in. I got up and made sure the door was
locked real solid. I still got half a scare when he came pounding up the
stairs, though. I didn’t know he could be so loud.

“MICHAEL!!” He slammed into the door. “Open this! Now!”

“No.”

“If you don’t open this door before I count to ten. I’m going to bust it
down! One!”

“Before you do that — ”

“Two!”

“Better call your bank!”

“Three!”

“B320-5127-O1R.” That was his checking account access code. He
silenced a couple seconds.

“Young man, I don’t know what you think you’re trying to pull — ”

“I’m not trying anything. I did it already.”

Mom came up the stairs and said, “What’s going on, David?”

“Shut up, Martha!” He was talking real quiet, now. “What did you do,
Michael?”

“Outlooped you. Disappeared you. Buried you.”

“You mean, you got into the bank computer and erased my checking
account?”

“Savings and mortgage on the condo, too.”

“Oh my God . . .”

Mom said, “He’s just angry, David. Give him time to cool off. Mikey,
you wouldn’t really do that, would you?”

“Then I accessed DynaRand,” I said. “Wiped your job. Your pension.
I got into your plastic, too.”

“He couldn’t have, David. Could he?”

“Michael!” He hit the door. “I’m going to wring your scrawny neck!”

“Wait!” I shouted back. “I copied all your files before I purged!
There’s a way to recover!”

He let up hammering on the door, and struggled to talk calm. “Give me
the copies right now and I’ll just forget that this happened.”

“I can’t. I mean, I did backups in other computers. And I secured the
files and hid them where only I know how to access.”

There was quiet. No, in a nano I realised it wasn’t quiet, it was Mom
and Dad talking real soft. I eared up to the door but all 1 caught was Mom
saying ‘why not?’ and Dad saying, ‘but what if he is telling the truth?’

“Okay Michael,” Dad said at last. “What do you want?”

I locked up. It was an embarasser; what did I want? I hadn’t thought
that far ahead. Me, caught without a program! I dropped half a laugh,
then tried to think. I mean, there was nothing they could get me I
couldn’t get myself, or with Rayno’s help. Rayno! I wanted to get in touch

Cyberpunk 103

with him, is what I wanted. I’d pulled this whole thing off without
Ray no!

I decided then it’d probably be better if my Olders didn’t know about
the Starfire, so I told Dad first thing I wanted was my smartterm back. It
took a long time for him to clump down to the basement and get it. He
stopped at his term in the den, first, to scan if I’d really purged him. He
was real subdued when he brought my smartterm back up.

I kept processing, but by the time he got back I still hadn’t come up
with anything more than I wanted them to leave me alone and stop telling
me what to do. I got the smartterm into my room without being pulped,
locked the door, got on line, and gave Dad his job back. Then I tried to
flag Rayno and Georgie, but couldn’t, so I left messages for when they
booted. I stayed up half the night playing a war, just to make sure Dad
didn’t try anything.

I booted and scanned first thing the next morning, but Rayno and
Georgie still hadn’t come on. So I went down and had an utter silent
breakfast and sent Mom and Dad off to work. I offed school and spent the
whole day finishing the war and working on some tricks and treats
programs. We had another utter silent meal when Mom and Dad came
home, and after supper I flagged. Rayno had been in the Net and left a
remark on when to find him.

I finally got him on line around eight, and he said Georgie was getting
trashed and probably heading for permanent downtime.

Then I told Rayno all about how I outlooped my old man, but he didn’t
seem real buzzed about it. He said he had something cooking and couldn’t
meet me at Buddy’s that night to talk about it, either. So we got offline,
and I started another war and then went to sleep.

The snoozer said 5:25 when I woke up, and I couldn’t logic how come I
was awake ’til I started making sense out of my ears. Dad was taking apart
the hinges on my door!

“Dad! You cut that out or I’ll purge you clean! There won’t be backups
this time!’’

“Try it,” he growled.

I jumped out of my sleepsack, powered up, booted and — no boot. I
tried again. I could get on line in my smartterm, but I couldn’t port out.
“I cut your cable down in the basement,” he said.

I grabbed the Starfire out of my closet and zipped it inside my jumper,
but before I could do the window, the door and Dad both fell in. Mom
came in right behind, popped open my dresser, and started stuffing socks
and underwear in a suitcase.

“Now you’re fritzed!” I told Dad. “I’ll never you back your files!”
He grabbed my arm.

“Michael, there’s something I think you should see.” He dragged me
down to his den and pulled some bundles of old paper trash out of his
104 AMAZING

desk. “These are receipts. This is what obsolete old relics like me use
because we don’t trust computer bookkeeping. I checked with work and
the bank; everything that goes on in the computer has to be verified with
paper. You can’t change anything for more than 24 hours.”

“Twenty-four hours?”! laughed. “Then you’re still fritzed! I can still
wipe you out any day, from any term in CityNet!”

“I know.”

Mom came into the den, carrying the suitcase and kleenexing her eyes.
“Mikey, you’ve got to understand that we love you, and this is for your
own good.” They dragged me down to the airport and stuffed me in a
private lear with a bunch of old gestapos.

I’ve had a few weeks now to get used to the Von Schlager Military
Academy. They tell me I’m a bright kid and with good behavior, there’s
really no reason at all why I shouldn’t graduate in five years. I am getting
tired, though, of all the older cadets telling me how soft I’ve got it now
that they’ve installed indoor plumbing.

Of course. I’m free to walk out any time I want. It’s only three hundred
miles to Fort McKenzie, where the road ends.

Sometimes at night, after lights out. I’ll pull out my Starfire and run
my fingers over the touchpads. That’s all I can do, since they turn off
power in the barracks at night. I’ll lie there in the dark, thinking about
Lisa, and Georgie, and Buddy’s All-Night Burgers, and all the fun we
used to pull off. But mostly I’ll think about Rayno, and what great plans
he cooks up.

I can’t wait to see how he gets me out of this one.

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Cyberpunk 105

LiTTEl^S FROM AM SF

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We try to be kindly editors here, but
most often our kindness must take the
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would blunt its point. And time and
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respond to bad writing by cutting verbal
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Dear Mr. Futhark,

Many writers have made a start by
flinging down a magazine and exclaim-
ing, “I can write better than that!” We
fear that you were not one of them.
Instead of trying to outdo the SF of
today, you are reinventing all the things
that were fresh once — and once only.
By page 2 of your story we are over-
taken by suspicion. You are going to
spring something on us. The aliens
will, at the end, turn out to be from a
planet with one moon, third from its
sun. A quick check — and sure enough.
Does any more interest reside in the
intervening prose? It does not. You
have shot your bolt.

Y ou have, as it were, discovered fire;
all in good time you will invent the
wheel. Allow us to sell you our guide.
Constructing Scientifiction & Fantasy.
It should get you at least to the discov-
ery of iron. And with fire, iron, and the
wheel, who knows what you might not
contrive?

Constructively,

The Editor

Dear Ms. Katakana,

106 AMAZING

We know that you mean well in try-
ing to infuse your story with character
and motive. Unfortunately, your de-
scription of the hero seems lifted out of
his job resume. Characterization is not
accomplished by discoursing about
people in the abstract. It is a matter of
showing your people doing, being done
to, and changing as a result. That way
you can move your story and your
reader: not by telling about your char-
acter’s perceptions, hindrances, and
propensities. Reading prose such as
this is like swimming through oatmeal.
So shun -tions, -ances, and -ities. If
nothing else, your ear should reaa to
their sound. Which is better — atten-
tion to the alleviation of comprehen-
sion or making yourself clear?

Tioncerely yours,

The Editor

Dear Mr. Ogham,

The essence of science fiction (and
fantasy) is that you should be imagina-
tively transported outside of yourself.
We ask you, is this done when your
protagonist is a writer? We get these
things regularly; yours is the third
today. Naturally the writers are either
blocked or denied worldly success, and
they invoke extra-worldly aid again
and again and again.

Even the most hackneyed theme can
be redeemed by the presence of a well-
realized charaaer, coming to aware-
ness of the cost of his choices. Not, alas,
in your story.

Yours,

The Editor

Dear Ms. Rune,

You tell us that you have written a

story in the vein of Ron Goulart.
Sounds vaguely vampirical to us.
Clearly you wanted it at all costs to be
madcap, riotous, and zany; and to this
end you have introduced something
outrageous on every page. We regret
that the effect is that of being thwacked
steadily over the head with a bladder.
Complete numbness sets in well before
the halfway point.

We accept that neophyte writers
must have some literary models. The
alternative is to have none, and we have
seen the consequences of that. But
when are you going to develop some
red corpuscles of your own? We might
look forward to the day when some-
body offers an editor a story “in the
vein of Ms. Rune.” The sincerest form
of flattery, you know.

Yours,

The Editor

Dear Mr. Hiragana,

How can we warn people ahead of
time that their neat idea for a story
might not be a very new one? Well, at
least if it’s founded on something
everybody knows about, then doubt-
less a thousand others have had the
same thought.

Therefore; you are not the first who
has thought of a Dungeons & Dragons*'
player being translated into a universe
where all these things are real. Not by a
long shot. There are two versions. You
have spared us the totally naif one,
where the guy says, “Hey, this is gonna
be fun!” You at least realize that he’s
going to have another think coming.
But that is reasonably obvious; and
your hero is a type, not an individual.

And your lingo is a pain in the
tochus. No, we are not going to tell you
the difference between “thou” and
“thee.”

Backward run sentences until reels
the mind. This we do tell you, that you

may depart from “normal” word order
for emphasis. And can the expletives,
such as forsooth, zounds, and tush! In
the last century, the name of tushery
was given to this sort of stuff. The bat-
tle against it continues.

Yours,

The Editor

Dear Mrs. Kanji,

Among old hats, your story is a real
topper. Cutesy alien lands and asks
Earth native for directions; complete
mutual misunderstanding results. This
merely rates a yawn ... but what inspired
you to name the alien Zzzyx? Such
mastery of cliche is awesome. Are pre-
historic men named Ug also in your
repertory?

Please know that the best humor has
characterization which is disturbingly
close to life. We laugh . . . but after-
ward we are moved to reflect. Nothing
in your story is true to life: it is all
contrived. But Zzzyx too shall pass

away. . . .
Yours,

The Editor

Dear Mr. Pilcrow,

Your “Black Sword of the Enchanted
Flame” really has it all; a castle, a
usurper, a damsel in distress, a secret
underground passage . . . the WORKS,
including a hero with an ace up his
sleeve. This is no less than is promised
by the title. The whole is such un-
abashed claptrap that we despair of
bringing you to your senses. We would
be happy — almost — if you never sent
us anything of this sort again. But we
would like to see a reform in your
whole approach to storytelling. Look,
your characters aren’t people, they are
automatons. They have a set rejjertoire
of speeches; hero’s defiance of villain,
hero’s reassurance of heroine, and so
forth. Your story is a stock sequence of

Letters from an SF Editor 107

stock situations with stock speeches.

And the magical object is so versatile
that we cannot conceive a reason, except
the dead hand of tradition, why it
should be a sword. It could be an
aspergillum, and you could still coun-
ter your enemies’ weapons with it if it
was magical enough.

Yours,

The Editor

Dear Mr. Ampersand,

Your “Enchanted Sword of the Black
Flame” really has it all . . .

Dear Mr. Kirillitza,

Alas, the impression given by your
“Kidnappers From the Coalsack” is
that you have read no science fiction
since Carl H. Claudy. Your aliens are
merely foreigners with blue skin and
illogical but clearly nefarious motives.
The motley assortment of earthlings
they make off with are simply too
cooperative and resourceful. The few
minor setbacks in their progress are not
enough for a real story. The dialogue
reminds us of both Tom Swift and of
Ralph 124C41+, if you know who he
was: your characters are always explain-
ing to one another things which their
hearers know perfectly well. There is
something boyish about their speech
(the women’s, too): the whole thing
smacks of wish-fulfillment.

Now YOU need some things explain-
ed to you. It was a shame to leave the
red half of the ribbon unused, you
thought? NO! Black, black is the color
— and we don’t mean gray, either. And
“double-spacing,” like “science fic-
tion,” means what you point to when
you say it. It is not two spaces between
words, but simply one line space
between lines. There are handbooks . . .
and, here, have a copy of our pamphlet
by way of first aid.

Oh, and your astronomy is totally

absurd. Not our duty to explain further.
Yours,

The Editor

Dear Mr. Firman,

On Jupiter? On Jupiter? You casu-
ally set a scene of “Buccaneers From
the Black Nebula” there, as if it were
just another place (nor is this even
required by your story). Now forty or
fifty years ago the fancies of writers and
artists as well — there was a whole
series of paintings by Frank R. Paul
— populated every planet and several
major moons in the Solar System.
Science, which was pretty sure even
then, nowadays firmly says no to this,
and you ought to pay attention. Alter-
natively, you should provide some
explanation of this anomaly, or you will
be suspected of not knowing your par-
sec from a black hole.

Sincerely,

The Editor

Dear Ms. Glyph,

There is a film in which Buster Kea-
ton (as we recall) launches a boat —
which goes straight to the bottom.
Your story does the same. What sinks it
is chiefly inveighing.

Let good and evil slug it out, by all
means. Let evil get the stuffing beaten
out of it, even — but don’t let it, as in
your story, be straw.

Let us recommend, purely as an
exercise, that you write this story over,
from the point of view of the villain.
Let him justify himself (but not in
monologue). Let him see the hero as
mistaken. Toward the end, you are
permitted to introduce some doubts

After you have done that, you may
submit to us your next story.

Yours,

The Editor

108 AMAZING

Dear Miss Spondee,

Parts of your sonnet were quite
good.

Yours,

The Editor

Dear Mr. Graffito,

You are making a mistake. Instead
of, as it were, shooting the sheriff in the
first paragraph, you are discoursing on
the history of law enforcement in the
West. You are doing so with all the
style of a high school term paper; and
these lumps of exposition continue
throughout your story. You have fallen
prey to Scylla and Charybdis both: you
ought to realize that it’s no better hav-
ing your characters tell one another
these things for the reader’s benefit.
We can only suggest that you study
how the masters do it. For one, they do
it with style.

It’s all the more pity that your char-
acters show signs of life now and then;
but then you screw down the lid and
throw earth on the coffin.

In deepest sympathy.

The Editor

Dear Mr. Screed,

Jealous of your work? You misun-
stand entirely. We might be jealous of

other editors, in which case we might
strive all the more to outdo them.

It is only right that you should have
thought well of your work when you
submitted it to us. We expect no less.
But you protest too much. We only
told you why it was not suitable for us.
We hope that you will in time discover
the entirely different pride of the pro-
fessional who has satisfactorily done
what is asked of him.

We will not enlarge on our earlier
comments about your plot. Or the
characterization. Or the dialogue. Or
about the long sections of background
exposition. What we have written, we
have written: it sufficed. We admit that
we could have told you why your
astronomy was absurd. Though there
are books. And if we tell you that your
syntax and spelling are bad, there too
are books, and you could on that pioint
have believed us. We would be glad, if
we find them in your next contribu-
tion, to point out some specific errors
for your edification.

But if you wish to help the predicted
downfall of Amazing by withholding
your impeccable contributions . . .
well, it’s your choice.

More in sorrow.

The Editor

Letters from an SF Editor 109

HOMEFARING

by Robert Silverberg

Mr. Silverberg tells us that he is just launching himself and his
new word-processor into Valentine Pontifex, the sequel to
Lord Valentine’s Castle. Meanwhile, however, an utterly
different story . . . :

McCulloch was beginning to molt. The sensation, inescapable and
unarguable, horrified him — it felt exactly as though his body was going
to split apart, which it was — and yet it was also completely familiar,
expected, welcome. Wave after wave of keen and dizzying pain swept
through him. Burrowing down deep in the sandy bed, he waved his great
claws about, lashed his flat tail against the pure white sand, scratched
frantically with quick worried gestures of his eight walking-legs.

He was frightened. He was calm. He had no idea what was about to
happen to him. He had done this a hundred times before.

The molting prodrome had overwhelming power. It blotted from his
mind all questions, and, after a moment, all fear. A white line of heat ran
down his back — no, down the top of his carapace — from a point just
back of his head to the first flaring segments of his tail-fan. He imagined
that all the sun’s force, concentrated through some giant glass lens, was
being inscribed in a single track along his shell. And his soft inner body
was straining, squirming, expanding, filling the carapace to overflowing.
But still that rigid shell contained him, refusing to yield to the pressure.
To McCulloch it was much like being inside a wet-suit that was suddenly
five times too small.

— What is the sun? What is glass? What is a lens? What is a wet-suit?

The questions swarmed suddenly upward in his mind like little busy
many-legged creatures springing out of the sand. But he had no time for
providing answers. The molting prodrome was developing with astound-
ing swiftness, carrying him along. The strain was becoming intolerable.
In another moment he would surely burst. He was writhing in short
angular convulsions. Within his claws, his tissues now were shrinking,
shriveling, drawing back within the ferocious shell-hulls, but the rest of
him was continuing inexorably to grow larger.

He had to escape from this shell, or it would kill him. He had to expel
himself somehow from this impossibly constricting container. Digging
his front claws and most of his legs into the sand, he heaved, twisted,
stretched, pushed. He thought of himself as being pregnant with himself,
struggling fiercely to deliver himself of himself.

Ah. The carapace suddenly began to split.

The crack was only a small one, high up near his shoulders — shoulders?
— but the imprisoned substance of him surged swiftly toward it, widen-
ing and lengthening it, and in another moment the hard horny covering
was cracked from end to tnd.Ah. Ah. That felt so good, that release from
constraint! Yet McCulloch still had to free himself. Delicately he drew

112 AMAZING

himself backward, withdrawing leg after leg from its covering in a precise,
almost fussy way, as though he were pulling his arms from the sleeves of
some incredibly ancient and frail garment.

Until he had his huge main claws free, though, he knew he could not
extricate himself from the sundered shell. And freeing the claws took
extreme care. The front limbs still were shrinking, and the limy joints of
the shell seemed to be dissolving and softening, but nevertheless he had to
pull each claw through a passage much narrower than itself. It was easy to
see how a hasty move might break a limb off altogether.

He centered his attention on the task. It was a little like telling his wrists
to make themselves small, so he could slide them out of handcuffs.

— Wrists? Handcuffs? What are those?

McCulloch paid no attention to that baffling inner voice. Easy, easy,
there — ah — yes, there, like that! One claw was free. Then the other,
slowly, carefully. Done. Both of them retracted. The rest was simple:
some shrugging and wiggling, exhausting but not really challenging, and
he succeeded in extending the breach in the carapace until he could crawl
backward out of it. Then he lay on the sand beside it, weary, drained,
naked, soft, terribly vulnerable. He wanted only to return to the sleep out
of which he had emerged into this nightmare of shellsplitting.

But some force within him would not let him slacken off. A moment
to rest, only a moment. He looked to his left, toward the discarded shell.
Vision was difficult — there were peculiar, incomprehensible refraction
effects that broke every image into thousands of tiny fragments —
but despite that, and despite the dimness of the light, he was able to see
that the shell, golden-hued with broad arrow-shaped red markings, was
something like a lobster’s, yet even more intricate, even more bizarre.
McCulloch did not understand why he had been inhabiting a lobster’s
shell. Obviously because he was a lobster; but he was not a lobster. That
was so, was it not? Yet he was underwater. He lay on fine white sand, at a
depth so great he could not make out any hint of sunlight overhead. The
water was warm, gentle, rich with tiny tasty creatures and with a swirling
welter of sensory data that swept across his receptors in bewildering
abundance.

He sought to learn more. But there was no further time for resting and
thinking now. He was unprotected. Any passing enemy could destroy
him while he was like this. Up, up, seek a hiding-place: that was the
requirement of the moment.

First, though, he paused to devour his old shell. That too seemed to be
the requirement of the moment; so he fell upon it with determination,
seizing it with his clumsy-looking but curiously versatile front claws,
drawing it toward his busy, efficient mandibles. When that was accom-
plished — no doubt to recycle the lime it contained, which he needed for
the growth of his new shell — he forced himself up and began a slow

Homefaring 113

scuttle, somehow knowing that the direction he had taken was the right
one.

Soon came the vibrations of something large and solid against his
sensors — a wall, a stone mass rising before him — and then, as he
continued, he made out with his foggy vision the sloping flank of a dark
broad cliff rising vertically from the ocean floor. Festoons of thick,
swaying red and yellow water plants clung to it, and a dense stippling
of rubbery-looking finger-shaped sponges, and a crawling, gaping,
slithering host of crabs and mollusks and worms, which vastly stirred
McCulloch’s appetite. But this was not a time to pause to eat, lest he be
eaten. Two enormous green anemones yawned nearby, ruffling their
voluptuous membranes seductively, hopefully. A dark shape passed
overhead, huge, tubular, tentacular, menacing. Ignoring the thronging
populations of the rock, McCulloch picked his way over and around them
until he came to the small cave, the McCulloch-sized cave, that was his
goal.

Gingerly he backed through its narrow mouth, knowing there would
be no room for turning around once he was inside. He filled the opening
nicely, with a little space left over. Taking up a position just within the
entrance, he blocked the cave-mouth with his claws. No enemy could
enter now. Naked though he was, he would be safe during his vulnerable
period.

For the first time since his agonizing awakening, McCulloch had a
chance to halt: rest, regroup, consider.

It seemed a wise idea to be monitoring the waters just outside the cave
even while he was resting, though. He extended his antennae a short
distance into the swarming waters, and felt at once the impact, again, of a
myriad sensory inputs, all the astounding complexity of the reef-world.
Most of the creatures that moved slowly about on the face of the reef were
simple ones, but McCulloch could feel, also, the sharp pulsations of
intelligence coming from several points not far away: the anemones, so it
seemed, and that enormous squid-like thing hovering overhead. Not
intelligence of a kind that he understood, but that did not trouble him: for
the moment, understanding could wait, while he dealt with the task of
recovery from the exhausting struggles of his molting. Keeping the
antennae moving steadily in slow sweeping circles of surveillance, he
began systematically to shut down the rest of his nervous system, until he
had attained the rest state that he knew — how? — was optimum for the
rebuilding of his shell. Already his soft new carapace was beginning to
grow rigid as it absorbed water, swelled, filtered out and utilized the lime.
But he would have to sit quietly a long while before he was fully armored
once more.

He rested. He waited. He did not think at all.

♦ + *

114 AMAZING

After a time his repose was broken by that inner voice, the one that had
been trying to question him during the wildest moments of his molting. It
spoke without sound, from a point somewhere within the core of his
torpid consciousness.

— Are you awake?

— I am now, McCulloch answered irritably.

— I need definitions. You are a mystery to me. What is a McCulloch?

— A man.

— That does not help.

— A male human being.

— That also has no meaning.

— Look, Tm tired. Can we discuss these things some other time?

— This is a good time. While we rest, while we replenish ourself.

— Ourselves, McCulloch corrected.

— Ourself is more accurate.

— But there are two of us.

— Are there? Where is the other?

McCulloch faltered. He had no perspective on his situation, none that
made any sense. — One inside the other, I think. Two of us in the same body.
But definitely two of us. McCulloch and not-McCulloch.

— I concede the point. There are two of us. You are within me. Who are
you?

— McCulloch.

— So you have said. But what does that mean?

— I don ’/ know.

The voice left him alone again. He felt its presence nearby, as a kind of
warm node somewhere along his spine, or whatever was the equivalent of
his spine, since he did not think invertebrates had spines. And it was fairly
clear to him that he was an invertebrate.

He had become, it seemed, a lobster, or, at any rate, something lobster-
like. Implied in that was transition: he had become. He had once been
something else. Blurred, tantalizing memories of the something else that
he once had been danced in his consciousness. He remembered hair,
fingers, fingernails, flesh. Clothing: a kind of removable exoskeleton.
Eyelids, ears, lips: shadowy concepts all, names without substance, but
there was a certain elusive reality to them, a volatile, tricky plausibility.
Each time he tried to apply one of those concepts to himself — “fingers,”
“hair,” “man,” “McCulloch” — it slid away, it would not stick. Yet all
the same those terms had some sort of relevance to him.

The harder he pushed to isolate that relevance, though, the harder it
was to maintain his focus on any part of that soup of half-glimpsed
notions in which his mind seemed to be swimming. The thing to do,
McCulloch decided, was to go slow, try not to force understanding, wait

Homefaring 115

for comprehension to seep back into his mind. Obviously he had had a
bad shock, some major trauma, a total disorientation. It might be days
before he achieved any sort of useful integration.

A gentle voice from outside his cave said, “I hope that your Growing
has gone well.”

Not a voice. He remembered voice: vibration of the air against the
eardrums. No air here, maybe no eardrums. This was a stream of minute
chemical messengers spurting through the mouth of the little cave and
rebounding off the thousands of sensory filaments on his legs, tentacles,
antennae, carapace, and tail. But the effect was one of words having been
spoken. And it was distinctly different from that other voice, the internal
one, that had been questioning him so assiduously a little while ago.

“It goes extremely well,” McCulloch replied: or was it the other
inhabitant of his body that had framed the answer? “I grow. I heal. I
stiffen. Soon I will come forth.”

“We feared for you.” The presence outside the cave emanated concern,
warmth, intelligence. Kinship. “In the first moments of your Growing, a
strangeness came from you.”

“Strangeness is within me. I am invaded.”

“Invaded? By what?”

“A McCulloch. It is a man, which is a human being.”

“Ah. A great strangeness indeed. Do you need help?”

McCulloch answered, “No. I will accommodate to it.”

And he knew that it was the other within himself who was making these
answers, though the boundary between their identities was so indistinct
that he had a definite sense of being the one who shaped these words. But
how could that be? He had no idea how one shaped words by sending
squirts of body-fluid into the all-surrounding ocean-fluid. That was not
his language. His language was —

— words —

— English words —

He trembled in sudden understanding. His antennae thrashed wildly,
his many legs jerked and quivered. Images churned in his suddenly
boiling mind: bright lights, elaborate equipment, faces, walls, ceilings.
People moving about him, speaking in low tones, occasionally addressing
words to him, English words —

— Is English what all McCullochs speak?

— Yes.

— So English is human-language?

— Yes. But not the only one, said McCulloch. I speak English, and also
German and a little — French. But other humans speak other languages.

— Very interesting. Why do you have so many languages?

— Because — because — we are different from one another, we live in
different countries, we have different cultures —

116 AMAZING

— This is without meaning again. There are many creatures, but only one
language, which all speak with greater or lesser skill, according to their
destinies.

McCulloch pondered that. After a time he replied:

— Lobster is what you are. Long body, claws and antennae in front, many
legs, flat tail in back. Different from, say, a clam. Clams have shell on top,
shell on bottom, soft flesh in between, hinge connecting. You are not like that.
You have lobster body. So you are lobster.

Now there was silence from the other.

Then — after a long pause —

— Very well. I accept the term. I am lobster. You are human. They are
clams.

— What do you call yourselves in your own language?

Silence.

— What ’syour own name for yourself? Your individual self, the way my
individual name is McCulloch and my species-name is human being?

Silence.

— Where am I, anyway?

Silence, still, so prolonged and utter that McCulloch wondered if the
other being had withdrawn itself from his consciousness entirely. Per-
haps days went by in this unending silence, perhaps weeks: he had no way
of measuring the passing of time. He realized that such units as days or
weeks were without meaning now. One moment succeeded the next, but
they did not aggregate into anything continuous.

At last came a reply.

— You are in the world, human McCulloch.

Silence came again, intense, clinging, a dark warm garment.
McCulloch made no attempt to reach the other mind. He lay motionless,
feeling his carapace thicken. From outside the cave came a flow of
impressions of passing beings, now differentiating themselves very
sharply: he felt the thick fleshy pulses of the two anemones, the sharp
stabbing presence of the squid, the slow ponderous broadcast of some-
thing dark and winged, and, again and again, the bright, comforting,
unmistakable output of other lobster-creatures. It was a busy, complex
world out there. The McCulloch part of him longed to leave the cave and
explore it. The lobster part of him rested, content within its tight shelter.

He formed hypotheses. He had journeyed from his own place to this
place, damaging his mind in the process, though now his mind seemed to
be reconstructing itself steadily, if erratically. What sort of voyage? To
another world? No: that seemed wrong. He did not believe that condi-
tions so much like the ocean-floor of Earth would be found on another —

Earth.

All right: significant datum. He was human, became from Earth. And

Homefaring 117

he was still on Earth. In the ocean. He was — what? — a land-dweller, an
air-breather, a biped, a flesh-creature, a human. And now he was within
the body of a lobster. Was that it? The entire human race, he thought, has
migrated into the bodies of lobsters, and here we are on the ocean floor,
scuttling about, waving our claws and feelers, going through difficult and
dangerous moltings —

Or maybe I’m the only one. A scientific experiment, with me as the
subjea: man into lobster. That brightly lit room that he remembered, the
intricate gleaming equipment all about him — that was the laboratory,
that was where they had prepared him for his transmigration, and then
they had thrown the switch and hurled him into the body of —

No. No. Makes no sense. Lobsters, McCulloch reflected, are low-
phylum creatures with simple nervous systems, limited intelligence.
Plainly the mind he had entered was a complex one. It asked thoughtful
questions. It carried on civilized conversations with its friends, who came
calling like ceremonious Japanese gentlemen, offering expressions of
solicitude and good will.

New hypothesis: that lobsters and other low-phylum animals are actu-
ally quite intelligent, with minds roomy enough to accept the sudden
insertion of a human being’s entire neural structure, but we in our foolish
anthropocentric way have up till now been too blind to perceive —

No. Too facile. Y ou could postulate the secretly lofty intelligence of the
world’s humble creatures, all right: you could postulate anything you
wanted. But that didn’t make it so. Lobsters did not ask questions.
Lobsters did not come calling like ceremonious Japanese gentlemen. At
least, not the lobsters of the world he remembered.

Improved lobsters? Evolved lobsters? Super-lobsters of the future?

— When am I?

Into his dizzied broodings came the quiet disembodied internal voice
of not-McCulloch, his companion:

— Is your displacement then one of time rather than space?

— I don’t know. Probably both. I’m a land creature.

— That has no meaning.

— / don’t live in the ocean. I breathe air.

From the other consciousness came an expression of deep astonish-
ment tinged with skepticism.

— T ruly? T hat is very hard to believe. When you are in your own body you
breathe no water at all?

— None. Not for long, or I would die.

— But there is so little land! And no creatures live upon it. Some make
short visits there. But nothing can dwell there very long. So it has always
been. And so will it be, until the time of the Molting of the World.

McCulloch considered that. Once again he found himself doubting
that he was still on Earth. A world of water? Well, that could fit into his

118 AMAZING

hypothesis of having journeyed forward in time, though it seemed to add
a layer of implausibility upon implausibility . How many millions of years,
he wondered, would it take for nearly all the Earth to have become
covered with water? And he answered himself; In about as many as it
would take to evolve a species of intelligent invertebrates.

Suddenly, terribly, it all fit together. Things crystallized and clarified
in his mind, and he found access to another segment of his injured and
redistributed memory; and he began to comprehend what had befallen
him, or, rather, what he had willingly allowed himself to undergo. With
that comprehension came a swift stinging sense of total displacement and
utter loss, as though he were drowning and desperately tugging at strands
of seaweed in a futile attempt to pull himself back to the surface. All that
was real to him, all that he was part of, everything that made sense

— gone, gone, perhaps irretrievably gone, buried under the weight of
uncountable millennia, vanished, drowned, forgotten, reduced to mere
geology — it was unthinkable, it was unacceptable, it was impossible, and
as the truth of it bore in on him he found himself choking on the frightful
vastness of time past.

But that bleak sensation lasted only a moment and was gone. In its
place came excitement, delight, confusion, and a feverish throbbing
curiosity about this place he had entered. He was here. That miraculous
thing that they had strived so fiercely to achieve had been achieved

— rather too well, perhaps, but it had been achieved, and he was launched
on the greatest adventure he would ever have, that anyone would ever
have. This was not the moment for submitting to grief and confusion. Out
of that world lost and all but forgotten to him came a scrap of verse that
gleamed and blazed in his soul: Only through time time is conquered.

McCulloch reached toward the mind that was so close to his within this
strange body.

— When will it be safe for us to leave this cave? he asked.

— It is safe any time, now. Do you wish to go outside?

— Yes. Please.

The creature stirred, flexed its front claws, slapped its flat tail against
the floor of the cave, and in a slow ungraceful way began to clamber
through the narrow opening, pausing more than once to search the waters
outside for lurking enemies. McCulloch felt a quick hot burst of terror, as
though he were about to enter some important meeting and had dis-
covered too late that he was naked. Was the shell truly ready? Was he
safely armored against the unknown foes outside, or would they fall upon
him and tear him apart like furious shrikes? But his host did not seem to
share those fears. It went plodding on and out, and in a moment more it
emerged on an algae-encrusted tongue of the reef wall, a short distance
below the two anemones. From each of those twin masses of rippling flesh
came the same sullen pouting hungry murmurs: “Ah, come closer, why

Homefaring 119

don’t you come closer?”

“Another time,” said the lobster, sounding almost playful, and turned
away from them.

McCulloch looked outward over the landscape. Earlier, in the turmoil
of his bewildering arrival and the pain and chaos of the molting pro-
drome, he had not had time to assemble any clear and coherent view of it.
But now — despite the handicap of seeing everything with the alien
perspective of the lobster’s many-faceted eyes — he was able to put
together an image of the terrain.

His view was a shortened one, because the sky was like a dark lid,
through which came only enough light to create a cone-shaped arena
spreading just a little way. Behind him was the face of the huge cliff,
occupied by plant and animal life over virtually every square inch, and
stretching upward until its higher reaches were lost in the dimness far
overhead. Just a short way down from the ledge where he rested was the
ocean floor, a broad expanse of gentle, undulating white sand streaked
here and there with long widening gores of some darker material. Here
and there bottom-growing plants arose in elegant billowy clumps, and
McCulloch spotted occasional creatures moving among them over the
sand that there were much like lobsters and crabs, though with some differ-
ences. He saw also some starfish and snails and sea urchins that did not
look at all unfamiliar. At higher levels he could make out a few swimming
creatures: a couple of the squid-like animals — they were hulking-looking
ropy-armed things, and he disliked them instinctively — and what
seemed to be large jellyfish. But something was missing, and after a
moment McCulloch realized what it was: fishes. There was a rich popula-
tion of invertebrate life wherever he looked, but no fishes as far as he
could see.

Not that he could see very far. The darkness clamped down like a
curtain perhaps two or three hundred yards away. But even so, it was odd
that not one fish had entered his field of vision in all this time. He wished
he knew more about marine biology. Were there zones on Earth where no
sea animals more complex than lobsters and crabs existed? Perhaps, but
he doubted it.

Two disturbing new hypotheses blossomed in his mind. One was that
he had landed in some remote future era where nothing out of his own
time survived except low-phylum sea-creatures. The other was that he
had not traveled to the future at all, but had arrived by mischance in some
primordial geological epoch in which vertebrate life had not yet evolved.
That seemed unlikely to him, though. This place did not have a prehis-
toric feel to him. He saw no trilobites; surely there ought to be trilobites
everywhere about, and not these oversized lobsters, which he did not
remember at all from his childhood visits to the natural history museum’s
prehistory displays.

120 AMAZING

But if this was truly the future — and the future belonged to the
lobsters and squids —

That was hard to accept. Only invertebrates? What could invertebrates
accomplish, what kind of civilization could lobsters build, with their hard
unsupple bodies and great clumsy claws? Concepts, half-remembered or
less than that, rushed through his mind: the Taj Mahal, the Gutenberg
Bible, the Sistine Chapel, the Madonna of the Rocks, the great window at
Chartres. Could lobsters create those? Could squids? What a poor place
this world must be, McCulloch thought sadly, how gray, how narrow,
how tightly bounded by the ocean above the endless sandy floor.

— Tell me, he said to his host. Are there any fishes in this sea?

The response was what he was coming to recognize as a sigh.

— Fishes? That is another word without meaning.

— A form of marine life, with an internal bony structure —

— With its shell inside?

— That’s one way of putting it, said McCulloch.

— There are no such creatures. Such creatures have never existed. There is
no room for the shell within the soft parts of the body. I can barely comprehend
such an arrangement: surely there is no need for it!

— It can be useful, I assure you. In the former world it was quite common.

— The world of human beings?

— Yes. My world, McCulloch said.

— Anything might have been possible in a former world, human
McCulloch. Perhaps indeed before the world’s last Molting shells were worn
inside. And perhaps after the next one they will be worn there again. But in
the world I know, human McCulloch, it is not the practice.

— Ah, McCulloch said. Then I am even farther from home than I
thought.

— Yes, said the host. I thinkyou are very far from home indeed. Does that
cause you sorrow?

— Among other things.

— If it causes you sorrow, I grieve for your grief, because we are compan-
ions now.

— You are very kind, said McCulloch to his host.

The lobster asked McCulloch if he was ready to begin their journey;
and when McCulloch indicated that he was, his host serenely kicked itself
free of the ledge with a single powerful stroke of its tail. For an instant it
hung suspended; then it glided toward the sandy bottom as gracefully as
though it were floating through air. When it landed, it was with all its
many legs poised delicately enpointe, and it stood that way, motionless, a
long moment.

Then it suddenly set out with great haste over the ocean floor, running
so lightfootedly that it scarcely raised a puff of sand wherever it touched

Homefaring 121

down. More than once it ran right across some bottom-grubbing crea-
ture, some slug or scallop, without appearing to disturb it at all.
McCulloch thought the lobster was capering in sheer exuberance, after
its long internment in the cave; but some growing sense of awareness of
his companion’s mind told him after a time that this was no casual frolic,
that the lobster was not in fact dancing but fleeing.

— Is there an enemy? McCulloch asked.

— Yes. Above.

The lobster’s antennae stabbed upward at a sharp angle, and
McCulloch, seeing through the other’s eyes, perceived now a large loom-
ing cylindrical shape swimming in slow circles near the upper border of
their range of vision. It might have been a shark, or even a whale.
McCulloch felt deceived and betrayed; for the lobster had told him this
was an invertebrate world, and surely that creature above him —

— No, said the lobster, without slowing its manic sprint. That animal
has no shell of the sort you described within its body. It is only a bag of flesh.
But it is very dangerous.

— How will we escape it?

— IVe will not escape it.

The lobster sounded calm, but whether it was the calm of fatalism or
mere expressionlessness, McCulloch could not say: the lobster had been
calm even in the first moments of McCulloch’s arrival in its mind, which
must surely have been alarming and even terrifying to it.

It had begun to move now in ever-widening circles. This seemed not so
much an evasive tactic as a ritualistic one, now, a dance indeed. A farewell
to life? The swimming creature had descended until it was only a few
lobster-lengths above them, and McCulloch had a clear view of it. No,
not a fish or a shark or any type of vertebrate at all, he realized, but an
animal of a kind wholly unfamiliar to him, a kind of enormous worm-like
thing whose meaty yellow body was reinforced externally by some sort of
chitinous struts running its entire length. Fleshy vane-like fins rippled
along its sides, but their purpose seemed to be more one of guidance than
propulsion, for it appeared to move by guzzling in great quantities of
water and expelling them through an anal siphon. Its mouth was vast,
with a row of dim little green eyes ringing the scarlet lips. When the
creature yawned, it revealed itself to be toothless, but capable of swallow-
ing the lobster easily at a gulp.

Looking upward into the yawning mouth, McCulloch had a sudden
image of himself elsewhere, spreadeagled under an inverted pyramid of
shining machinery as the countdown reached its final moments, as the
technicians made ready to —

— to hurl him —

— to hurl him forward in time —

122 AMAZING

Yes. An experiment. Definitely an experiment. He could remember it
now. Bleier, Caldwell, Rodrigues, Mortenson. And all the others.
Gathered around him, faces tight, forced smiles. The lights. The colors.
The bizarre coils of equipment. And the volunteer. The volunteer. First
human subject to be sent forward in time. The various rabbits and mice of
the previous experiments, though they had apparently survived the
round trip unharmed, had not been capable of delivering much of a report
on their adventures. “I’msmarter than any rabbit,” McCulloch had said.
“Send me. I’ll tell you what it’s like up there.” The volunteer. All that
was coming back to him in great swatches now, as he crouched here
within the mind of something much like a lobster, waiting for a vast
yawning predator to pounce. The project, the controversies, his co-
workers, the debate over risking a human mind under the machine, the
drawing of lots. McCulloch had not been the only volunteer. He was just
the lucky one. “Here you go, Jim-boy. A hundred years down the
time-line.”

Or fifty, or eighty, or a hundred and twenty. They didn’t have really
precise trajectory control. They thought he might go as much as a
hundred twenty years. But beyond much doubt they had overshot by a
few hundred million. Was that within the permissible parameters of
error?

He wondered what would happen to him if his host here were to perish.
Would he die also? Would he find himself instantly transferred to some
other being of this epoch? Or would he simply be hurled back instead to
his own time? He was not ready to go back. He had just begun to observe,
to understand, to explore —

McCulloch’s host had halted its running, now, and stood quite still in
what was obviously a defensive mode, body cocked and upreared, claws
extended, with the huge crusher claw erect and the long narrow cutting
claw opening and closing in a steady rhythm. It was a threatening pose,
but the swimming thing did not appear to be greatly troubled by it. Did
the lobster mean to let itself be swallowed, and then to carve an exit for
itself with those awesome weapons, before the alimentary juices could go
to work on its armor?

“You choose your prey foolishly,” said McCulloch’s host to its enemy.

The swimming creature made a reply that was unintelligible to
McCulloch; vague blurry words, the clotted outspew of a feeble intelli-
gence. It continued its unhurried downward spiral.

“You are warned,” said the lobster. “You are not selecting your victim
wisely.”

Again came a muddled response, sluggish and incoherent, the speech
of an entity for whom verbal communication was a heavy, all but impos-
sible effort.

Homefaring 123

Its enormous mouth gaped. Its fins rippled fiercely as it siphoned itself
downward the last few yards to engulf the lobster. McCulloch prepared
himself for transition to some new and even more unimaginable state
when his host met its death. But suddenly the ocean floor was swarming
with lobsters. They must have been arriving from all sides — summoned
by his host’s frantic dance, McCulloch wondered? — while McCulloch,
intent on the descent of the swimmer, had not noticed. Ten, twenty,
possibly fifty of them arrayed themselves now beside McCulloch’s host,
and as the swimmer, tail on high, mouth wide, lowered itself like some
gigantic suction-hose toward them, the lobsters coolly and implacably
seized its lips in their claws. Caught and helpless, it began at once to
thrash, and from the pores through which it spoke came bleating incoher-
ent cries of dismay and torment.

There was no mercy for it. It had been warned. It dangled tail upward
while the pack of lobsters methodically devoured it from below, pausing
occasionally to strip away and discard the rigid rods of chitin that formed
its superstructure. Swiftly they reduced it to a faintly visible cloud of
shreds oscillating in the water, and then small scavenging creatures came
to fall upon those, and there was nothing at all left but the scattered rods
of chitin on the sand.

The entire episode had taken only a few moments: the coming of the
predator, the dance of McCulloch’s host, the arrival of the other lobsters,
the destruction of the enemy. Now the lobsters were gathered in a sort of
convocation about McCulloch’s host, wordlessly manifesting a common-
ality of spirit, a warmth of fellowship after feasting, that seemed quite
comprehensible to McCulloch. For a short while they had been uninhib-
ited savage carnivores consuming convenient meat; now once again they
were courteous, refined, cultured — Japanese gentlemen, Oxford dons,
gentle Benedictine monks.

McCulloch studied them closely. They were definitely more like lob-
sters than like any other creature he had even seen, very much like
lobsters, and yet there were differences. They were larger. How much
larger, he could not tell, for he had no real way of judging distance and
size in this undersea world; but he supposed they must be at least three
feet long, and he doubted that lobsters of his time, even the biggest, were
anything like that in length. Their bodies were wider than those of
lobsters, and their heads were larger. The two largest claws looked like
those of the lobsters he remembered, but the ones just behind them
seemed more elaborate, as if adapted for more delicate procedures than
mere rending of food and stuffing it into the mouth. There was an odd
little hump, almost a dome, midway down the lobster’s back — the center
of the expanded nervous system, perhaps.

The lobsters clustered solemnly about McCulloch’s host and each
lightly tapped its claws against those of the adjoining lobster in a sort of

124 AMAZING

handshake, a process that seemed to take quite some time. McCulloch
became aware also that a conversation was under way.

What they were talking about, he realized, was him.

“It is not painful to have a McCulloch within one,” his host was
explaining. “It came upon me at molting time, and that gave me a
moment of difficulty, molting being what it is. But it was only a moment.
After that my only concern was for the McCulloch’s comfort.”

“And it is comfortable now?”

“It is becoming more comfortable.”

“When will you show it to us?”

“Ah, that cannot be done. It has no real existence, and therefore I
cannot bring it forth.”

“What is it, then? A wanderer? A revenant?”

“A revenant, yes. So I think. And a wanderer. It says it is a human
being.”

“And what is that? Is a human being a kind of McCulloch?”

“I think a McCulloch is a kind of human being.”

“Which is a revenant.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“This is an Omen!”

“Where is its world?”

“Its world is lost to it.”

“Yes, definitely an Omen.”

“It lived on dry land.”

“It breathed air.”

“It wore its shell within its body.”

“What a strange revenant!”

“What a strange world its world must have been.”

“It is the former world, would you not say?”

“So I surely believe. And therefore this is an Omen.”

“Ah, we shall Molt. We shall Molt.”

McCulloch was altogether lost. He was not even sure when his own
host was the speaker.

“Is it the Time?”

“We have an Omen, do we not?”

“The McCulloch surely was sent as a herald.”

“There is no precedent.”

“Each Molting, though, is without precedent. We cannot conceive
what came before. We cannot imagine what comes after. We learn by
learning. The McCulloch is the herald. The McCulloch is the Omen.”

“I think not. I think it is unreal and unimportant.”

“Unreal, yes. But not unimportant.”

“The Time is not at hand. The Molting of the World is not yet due.
The human is a wanderer and a revenant, but not a herald and certainly

Homefaring 125

not an Omen.”

“It comes from the former world.”

“It says it does. Can we believe that?”

“It breathed air. In the former world, perhaps there were creatures
that breathed air.”

“It says it breathed air. I think it is neither herald nor Omen, neither
wanderer nor revenant. I think it is a myth and a fugue. I think it betokens
nothing. It is an accident. It is an interruption.”

“That is an uncivil attitude. We have much to learn from the
McCulloch. And if it is an Omen, we have immediate responsibilities that
must be fulfilled.”

“But how can we be certain of what it is?”

— May I speak? said McCulloch to his host.

— Of course.

— How can I make myself heard?

— Speak through me.

“The McCulloch wishes to be heard!”

“Hear it! Hear it!”

“Let it speak!”

McCulloch said, and the host spoke the words aloud for him, “I am a
stranger here, and your guest, and so I ask you to forgive me if I give
offense, for 1 have little understanding of your ways. Nor do I know if I
am a herald or an Omen. But I tell you in all truth that I am a wanderer,
and that I am sent from the former world, where there are many creatures
of my kind, who breathe air and live upon the land and carry their —
shells — inside their body.”

“An Omen, certainly,” said several of the lobsters at once. “A herald,
beyond doubt.”

McCulloch continued, “It was our hope to discover something of the
worlds that are to come after ours. And therefore I was sent forward — ”

“A herald — certainly a herald!”

“ — to come to you, to go among you, to learn to know you, and then to
return to my own people, the air-people, the human people, and bring the
word of what is to come. But I think that I am not the herald you expect. I
carry no message for you. We could not have known that you were here.
Out of the former world I bring you the blessing of those that have gone
before, however, and when I go back to that world I will bear tidings of
your life, of your thought, of your ways — ”

“Then our kind is unknown to your world?”

McCulloch hesitated. “Creatures somewhat like you do exist in the
seas of the former world. But they are smaller and simpler than you, and I
think their civilization, if they have one, is not a great one.”

“You have no discourse with them, then?” one of the lobsters asked.

“Very little,” he said. A miserable evasion, cowardly, vile. McCulloch

126 AMAZING

shivered. He imagined himself crying out, “We eat them!” and the water
turning black with their shocked outbursts — and saw them instantly
falling upon him, swiftly and efficiently slicing him to scraps with their
claws. Through his mind ran monstrous images of lobsters in tanks,
lobsters boiling alive, lobsters smothered in rich sauces, lobsters shelled,
lobsters minced, lobsters rendered into bisques — he could not halt the
torrent of dreadful visions. Such was our discourse with your ancestors.
Such was our mode of interspecies communication. He felt himself
drowning in guilt and shame and fear.

The spasm passed. The lobsters had not stirred. They continued to
regard him with patience: impassive, unmoving, remote. McCulloch
wondered if all that had passed through his mind just then had been
transmitted to his host. Very likely; the host earlier had seemed to have
access to all of his thoughts, though McCulloch did not have the same
entree to the host’s. And if the host knew, did all the others? What then,
what then?

Pehaps they did not even care. Lobsters, he recalled, were said to be
callous cannibals, who might attack one another in the very tanks where
they were awaiting their turns in the chefs pot. It was hard to view these
detached and aloof beings, these dons, these monks, as having that sort of
ferocity: but yet he had seen them go to work on that swimming mouth-
creature without any show of embarrassment, and perhaps some atavistic
echo of their ancestors’ appetites lingered in them, so that they would
think it only natural that McCullochs and other humans had fed on such
things as lobsters. Why should they be shocked? Perhaps they thought
that humans fed on humans, too. It was all in the former world, was it
not? And in any event it was foolish to fear that they would exact some
revenge on him for Lobster Thermidor, no matter how appalled they
might be. He wasn’t here. He was nothing more than a figment, a
revenant, a wanderer, a set of intrusive neural networks within their
companion’s brain. The worst they could do to him, he supposed, was to
exorcise him, and send him back to the former world.

Even so, he could not entirely shake the guilt and the shame. Or the
fear.

Bleier said, “Of course, you aren’t the only one who’s going to be in
jeopardy when we throw the switch. There’s your host to consider. One
entire human ego slamming into his mind out of nowhere like a brick
falling off a building — what’s it going to do to him?”

“Flip him out, is my guess,” said Jake Ybarra. “You’ll land on him and
he’ll announce he’s Napoleon, or Joan of Arc, and they’ll hustle him off to
the nearest asylum. Are you prepared for the possibility, Jim, that you’re
going to spend your entire time in the future sitting in a loony-bin
undergoing therapy?”

Homefaring 127

“Or exorcism,” Mortenson suggested. “If there’s been some kind of
reversion to barbarism. Christ, you might even get your host burned at
the stake!”

“I don’t think so,” McCulloch said quietly. “I’m a lot more optimistic
than you guys. I don’t expect to land in a world of witch-doctors and
mumbo-jumbo, and I don’t expect to find myself in a place that locks
people up in Bedlam because they suddenly start acting a little strange.
The chances are that I am going to unsettle my host when I enter him, but
that he’ll simply get two sanity-stabilizer pills from his medicine chest
and take them with a glass of water and feel better in five minutes. And
then I’ll explain what’s happ)ening to him.”

“More than likely no explanations will be necessary,” said Maggie
Caldwell. “By the time you arrive, time travel will have been a going
proposition for three or four generations, after all. Having a traveler from
the past turn up in your head will be old stuff to them. Your host will
probably know exactly what’s going on from the moment you hit him.”

“Let’s hope so,” Bleier said. He looked across the laboratory to
Rodrigues. “What’s the count. Bob?”

“T minus eighteen minutes.”

“I’m not worried about a thing,” McCulloch said.

Caldwell took his hand in hers. “Neither am I, Jim.”

“Then why is your hand so cold?” he asked.

“So I’m a little worried,” she said.

McCulloch grinned. “So am I. A little. Only a little.”

“You’re human, Jim. No one’s ever done this before.”

“It’ll be a can of corn!” Ybarra said.

Bleier looked at him blankly. “What the hell does that mean, Jake?”

Ybarra said, “Archaic twentieth-century slang. It means it’s going to
be a lot easier than we think.”

“I told you,” said McCulloch, “I’m not worried.”

“I’m still worried about the impact on the host,” said Bleier.

“All those Napoleons and Joans of Arc that have been cluttering the
asylums for the last few hundred years,” Maggie Caldwell said. “Could it
be that they’re really hosts for time-travelers going backward in time?”

“You can’t go backward,” said Mortenson. “You know that. The
round trip has to begin with a forward leap.”

“Under present theory,” Caldwell said. “But present theory’s only five
years old. It may turn out to be incomplete. We may have had all sorts of
travelers out of the future jumping through history, and never even knew
it. All the nuts, lunatics, inexplicable geniuses, idiot-savants — ”

“Save it, Maggie,” Bleier said. “Let’s stick to what we understand
right now.”

“Oh? Do we understand anything?” McCulloch asked.

Bleier gave him a sour look. “I thought you said you weren’t worried.”

128 AMAZING

“I’m not. Not much. But I’d be a fool if I thought we really had a firm
handle on what we’re doing. We’re shooting in the dark, and let’s never
kid ourselves about it.”

“T minus fifteen,” Rodrigues called.

“Try to make the landing easy on your host, Jim,” Bleier said.

“I’ve got no reason not to want to,” said McCulloch.

He realized that he had been wandering. Bleier, Maggie, Mortenson,
Ybarra — for a moment they had been more real to him than the
congregation of lobsters. He had heard their voices, he had seen their
faces, Bleier plump and perspiring and serious, Ybarra dark and lean,
Maggie with her crown of short upswept red hair blazing in the labora-
tory light — and yet they were all dead, a hundred million years dead, two
hundred million, back there with the triceratops and the trilobite in the
drowned former world, and here he was among the lobster-people. How
futile all those discussions of what the world of the early twenty-second
century was going to be like! Those speculations on population density,
religious belief, attitudes toward science, level of technological achieve-
ment, all those late-night sessions in the final months of the projert,
designed to prepare him for any eventuality he might encounter while he
was visiting the future — what a waste, what a needless exercise. As was
all that fretting about upsetting the mental stability of the person who
would receive his transtemporalized consciousness. Such qualms, such
moral delicacy — all unnecessary, McCulloch knew now.

But of course they had not anticipated sending him so eerily far across
the dark abysm of time, into a world in which humankind and all its works
were not even legendary memories, and the host who would receive him
was a calm and thoughtful crustacean capable of taking him in with only
the most mild and brief disruption of its serenity.

The lobsters, he noticed now, had reconfigured themselves while his
mind had been drifting. They had broken up their circle and were arrayed
in a long line stretching over the ocean floor, with his host at the end of the
procession. The queue was a close one, each lobster so close to the one
before it that it could touch it with the tips of its antennae, which from
time to time they seemed to be doing; and they all were moving in a weird
kind of quasi-military lockstep, every lobster swinging the same set of
walking-legs forward at the same time.

— Where are we going? McCulloch asked his host.

— The pilgrimage has begun.

— What pilgrimage is that?

— To the dry place, said the host. T o the place of no water. T o the land.

— Why?

— It is the custom. We have decided that the time of the Molting of the
World is soon to come; and therefore we must make the pilgrimage. It is the

Homefaring 129

end of all things. It is the coming of a newer world. You are the herald: so we
have agreed.

— Will you explain? I have a thousand questions. I need to know more
about all this, McCulloch said.

— Soon Soon This is not a time for explanations.

McCulloch felt a firm and unequivocal closing of contact, an emphatic
withdrawal. He sensed a hard ringing silence that was almost an absence
of the host, and knew it would be inappropriate to transgress against it.
That was painful, for he brimmed now with an overwhelming rush of
curiosity. The Molting of the World? The end of all things? A pilgrimage
to the land? What land? Where? But he did not ask. He could not ask. The
host seemed to have vanished from him, disappearing utterly into this
pilgrimage, this migration, moving in its lockstep way with total concen-
tration and a kind of mystic intensity. McCulloch did not intrude. He felt
as though he had been left alone in the body they shared.

As they marched, he concentrated on observing, since he could not
interrogate. And there was much to see; for the longer he dwelled within
his host, the more accustomed he grew to the lobster’s sensory mecha-
nisms. The compound eyes, for instance. Enough of his former life had
returned to him now so that he remembered human eyes clearly, those
two large gleaming ovals, so keen, so subtle of focus, set beneath protect-
ing ridges of bone. His host’s eyes were nothing like that: they were two
clusters of tiny lenses rising on jointed, movable stalks, and what they
showed was an intricately dissected view, a mosaic of isolated points of
light. But he was learning somehow to translate those complex and
baffling images into a single clear one, just as, no doubt, a creature
accustomed to compound-lens vision would sooner or later learn to see
through human eyes, if need be. And McCulloch found now that he could
not only make more sense out of the views he received through his host’s
eyes, but that he was seeing farther, into quite distant dim recesses of this
sunless undersea realm.

Not that the stalked eyes seemed to be a very important part of the
lobster’s perceptive apparatus. They provided nothing more than a cer-
tain crude awareness of the immediate terrain. But apparently the real
work of perceiving was done mainly by the thousands of fine bristles, so
minute that they were all but invisible, that sprouted on every surface of
his host’s body. These seemed to send a constant stream of messages to
the lobster’s brain: information on the texture and topography of the
ocean floor, on tiny shifts in the flow and temperature of the water, of the
proximity of obstacles, and much else. Some of the small hairlike fila-
ments were sensitive to touch and others, it appeared, to chemicals; for
whenever the lobster approached some other life-form, it received data
on its scent — or the underwater equivalent — long before the creature
itself was within visual range. The quantity and richness of these inputs

130 AMAZING

Homefaring 1 31

astonished McCulloch. At every moment came a torrent of data corre-
sponding to the landside senses he remembered, smell, taste, touch; and
some central processing unit within the lobster’s brain handled every-
thing in the most effortless fashion.

But there was no sound. The ocean world appeared to be wholly silent.
McCulloch knew that that was untrue, that sound waves propagated
through water as persistently as through air; indeed, faster. Yet the
lobster seemed neither to possess nor to need any sort of auditory equip-
ment. The sensory bristles brought in all the data it required. The
“speech” of these creatures, McCulloch had long ago realized, was
effected not by voice but by means of spurts of chemicals released into the
water, hormones, perhaps, or amino acids, something of a distinct and
readily recognizable identity, emitted in some high-redundancy pattern
that permitted easy recognition and decoding despite the difficulties
caused by currents and eddies. It was, McCulloch thought, like trying to
communicate by printing individual letters on scraps of paper and
hurling them into the wind. But it did somehow seem to work, however
clumsy a concept it might be, because of the extreme sensitivity of the
lobster’s myriad chemoreceptors.

The antennae played some significant role also. There were two sets of
them, a pair of three-branched ones just behind the eyes and a much
longer single-branched pair behind those. The long ones restlessly
twitched and probed inquisitively and most likely, he suspected, served
as simple balancing and coordination devices much like the whiskers of a
cat. The purpose of the smaller antennae eluded him, but it was his guess
that they were involved in the process of communication between one
lobster and another, either by some semaphore system or in a deeper
communion beyond his still awkward comprehension.

McCulloch regretted not knowing more about the lobsters of his own
era. But he had only a broad general knowledge of natural history,
extensive, fairly deep, yet not good enough to tell him whether these
elaborate sensory functions were characteristic of all lobsters or had
evolved during the millions of years it had taken to create the water-
world. Probably some of each, he decided. Very likely even the lobsters of
the former world had had much of this scanning equipment, enough to
allow them to locate their prey, to find their way around in the dark
suboceanic depths, to undertake their long and unerring migrations. But
he found it hard to believe that they could have had much “speech”
capacity, that they gathered in solemn sessions to discuss abstruse ques-
tions of theology and mythology, to argue gently about omens and heralds
and the end of all things. That was something that the patient and
ceaseless unfoldings of time must have wrought.

The lobsters marched without show of fatigue: not scampering in that
dancelike way that his host had adopted while summoning its comrades to

132 AMAZING

save it from the swimming creature, but moving nevertheless in an
elegant and graceful fashion, barely touching the ground with the tips of
their legs, going onward, step by step by step, steadily and fairly swiftly.

McCulloch noticed that new lobsters frequently joined the procession,
cutting in from left or right just ahead of his host, who always remained at
the rear of the line; that line now was so long, hundreds of lobsters long,
that it was impossible to see its beginning. Now and again one would
reach out with its bigger claw to seize some passing animal, a starfish or
urchin or small crab, and without missing a step would shred and devour
it, tossing the unwanted husk to the cloud of planktonic scavengers that
always hovered nearby. This foraging on the march was done with utter
lack of self-consciousness; it was almost by reflex that these creatures
snatched and gobbled as they journeyed.

And yet all the same they did not seem like mere marauding mouths.
From this long line of crustaceans there emanated, McCulloch realized, a
mysterious sense of community, a wholeness of society, that he did not
understand but quite sharply sensed. This was plainly not a mere migra-
tion but a true pilgrimage. He thought ruefully of his earlier condescend-
ing view of these people, incapable of achieving the Taj Mahal or the
Sistine Chapel, and felt abashed: for he was beginning to see that they had
other accomplishments of a less tangible sort that were only barely
apparent to his displaced and struggling mind.

“When you come back,” Maggie said, “you’ll be someone else. There’s
no escaping that. It’s the one thing I’m frightened of. Not that you’ll die
making the hop, or that you’ll get into some sort of terrible trouble in the
future, or that we won’t be able to bring you back at all, or anything like
that. But that you’ll have become someone else.”

“I feel pretty secure in my identity,” McCulloch told her.

“I know you do. God knows, you’re the most stable person in the
group, and that’s why you’re going. But even so. Nobody’s ever done
anything like this before. It can’t help but change you. When you return,
you’re going to be unique among the human race.”

“That sounds very awesome. But I’m not sure it’ll matter that much,
Mag. I’m just taking a little trip. If I were going to Paris, or Istanbul, or
even Antarctica, would I come back totally transformed? I’d have had
some new experiences, but — ”

“It isn’t the same,” she said. “It isn’t even remotely the same.” She
came across the room to him and put her hands on his shoulders, and
stared deep into his eyes, which sent a little chill through him, as it always
did; for when she looked at him that way there was a sudden flow of
energy between them, a powerful warm rapport rushing from her to him
and from him to her as though through a huge conduit, that delighted and
frightened him both at once. He could lose himself in her. He had never

Home faring 133

let himself feel that way about anyone before. And this was not the
moment to begin. There was no room in him for such feelings, not now,
not when he was within a couple of hours of leaping off into the most
unknown of unknowns. When he returned — if he returned — he might
risk allowing something at last to develop with Maggie. But not on the eve
of departure, when everything in his universe was tentative and condi-
tional. “Can I tell you a little story, Jim?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“When my father was on the faculty at Cal, he was invited to a
reception to meet a couple of the early astronauts, two of the Apollo men

— I don’t remember which ones, but they were from the second or third
voyage to the Moon. When he showed up at the faculty club, there were
two or three hundred people there, milling around having cocktails, and
most of them were people he didn’t know. He walked in and looked
around and within ten seconds he had found the astronauts. He didn’t
have to be told. He just knew. And this is my father, remember, who
doesn’t believe in ESP or anything like that. But he said they were
impossible to miss, even in that crowd. You could see it one their faces, you
could feel the radiance coming from them, there was an aura, there was
something about their eyes. Something that said, I have walked on the
Moon, 1 have been to that place which is not of our world and I have come
back, and now I am someone else. I am who I was before, but I am someone else
also."

“But they went to the Moon, Mag!”

“And you’re going to the future, Jim. That’s even weirder. You’re
going to a place that doesn’t exist. And you may meet yourself there

— ninety-nine years old, and waiting to shake hands with you — or you
might meet me, or your grandson, or find out that everyone on Earth is
dead, or that everyone has turned into a disembodied spirit, or that
they’re all immortal superbeings, or — or — Christ, I don’tknow. You’ll
see a world that nobody alive today is supposed to see. And when you
come back, you’ll have that aura. You’ll be transformed.”

“Is that so frightening?”

“To me it is,” she said.

“Why is that?”

“Dummy,” she said. “Dope. How explicit do I have to be, anyway? I
thought I was being obvious enough.”

He could not meet her eyes. “This isn’t the best moment to talk
about — ”

“I know. I’m sorry, Jim. But you’re important to me, and you’re going
somewhere and you’re going to become someone else, and I’m scared.
Selfish and scared.”

“Are you telling me not to go?”

“Don’t be absurd. You’d go no matter what I told you, and I’d despise

134 AMAZING

you if you didn’t. There’s no turning back now.”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t have dumped any of this on you today. You don’t need it
right this moment.”

“It’s okay,” he said softly. He turned until he was looking straight at
her, and for a long moment he simply stared into her eyes and did not
speak, and then at last he said, “Listen, I’m going to take a big fantastic
improbable insane voyage, and I’m going to be a witness to God knows
what, and then I’m going to come back and yes. I’ll be changed — only an
ox wouldn’t be changed, or maybe only a block of stone — but I’ll still be
me, whoever me is. Don’t worry, okay? I’ll still be me. And we’ll still be
us.”

“Whoever us is.”

“Whoever. Jesus, I wish you were going with me, Mag!”

“That’s the silliest schoolboy thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“True, though.”

“Well, I can’t go. Only one at a time can go, and it’s you. I’m not even
sure I’d want to go. I’m not as crazy as you are, I suspect. You go, Jim,
and come back and tell me all about it.”

“Yes.”

“And then we’ll see what there is to see about you and me.”

“Yes,” he said.

She smiled. “Let me show you a poem, okay? You must know it,
because it’s Eliot, and you know all the Eliot there is. But I was reading
him last night — thinking of you, reading him — and I found this, and it
seemed to be the right words, and I wrote them down. From one of the
Quartets.”

“I think I know,” he said:

“ ^ Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness — ’ ”

“That’s a good one too,” Maggie said. “But it’s not the one I had in
mind.” She unfolded a piece of paper. “It’s this:

“ ‘We shall not cease from exploration

4nd the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started — ’ ”

“ ‘ — And know the place for the first time, ’ ” he completed. “Yes.
Exactly. To arrive where we started. And know the place for the first
time.”

The lobsters were singing as they marched. That was the only word,
McCulloch thought, that seemed to apply. The line of pilgrims now was
immensely long — there must have been thousands in the procession by
this time, and more were joining constantly — and from them arose an
outpouring of chemical signals, within the narrowest of tonal ranges, that

Homefaring 135

mingled in a close harmony and amounted to a kind of sustained chant on
a few notes, swelling, filling all the ocean with its powerful and intense
presence. Once again he had an image of them as monks, but not Benedic-
tines, now: these were Buddhist, rather, an endless line of yellow-robed
holy men singing a great Om as they made their way up some Tibetan
slope. He was awed and humbled by it — by the intensity, and by the
wholeheartedness of the devotion. It was getting hard for him to
remember that these were crustaceans, no more than ragged claws scut-
tling across the floors of silent seas; he sensed minds all about him, whole
and elaborate minds arising out of some rich cultural matrix, and it was
coming to seem quite natural to him that these people should have
armored exoskeletons and jointed eye-stalks and a dozen busy legs.

His host had still not broken its silence, which must have extended now
over a considerable period. Just how long a period, McCulloch had no
idea, for there were no significant alternations of light and dark down here
to indicate the passing of time, nor did the marchers ever seem to sleep,
and they took their food, as he had seen, in a casual and random way
without breaking step. But it seemed to McCulloch that he had been
effectively alone in the host’s body for many days.

He was not minded to try to re-enter contact with the other just yet
— not until he received some sort of signal from it. Plainly the host had
withdrawn into some inner sanctuary to undertake a profound medita-
tion; and McCulloch, now that the early bewilderment and anguish of his
journey through time had begun to wear off, did not feel so dependent
upon the host that he needed to blurt his queries constantly into his
companion’s consciousness. He would watch, and wait, and attempt to
fathom the mysteries of this place unaided.

The landscape had undergone a great many changes since the begin-
ning of the march. That gentle bottom of fine white sand had yielded to a
terrain of rough dark gravel, and that to one of a pale sedimentary stuff
made up of tiny shells, the mortal remains, no doubt, of vast hordes of
diatoms and foraminifera, that rose like clouds of snowflakes at the
lobsters’ lightest steps. Then came a zone where a stratum of thick red
clay spread in all directions. The clay held embedded in it an odd
assortment of rounded rocks and clamshells and bits of chitin, so that it
had the look of some complex paving material from a fashionable terrace.
And after that they entered a region where slender spires of a sharp black
stone, faceted like worked flint, sprouted stalagmite-fashion at their feet.
Through all of this the lobster-pilgrims marched unperturbed, never
halting, never breaking their file, moving in a straight line whenever
possible and making only the slightest of deviations when compelled to it
by the harshness of the topography.

Now they were in a district of coarse yellow sandy globules, out of
which two types of coral grew: thin angular strands of deep jet, and

136 AMAZING

supple, almost mobile fingers of a rich lovely salmon hue. McCulloch
wondered where on Earth such stuff might be found, and chided himself
at once for the foolishness of the thought: the seas he knew had been
swallowed long ago in the great all-encompassing ocean that swathed the
world, and the familiar continents, he supposed, had broken from their
moorings and slipped to strange parts of the globe well before the rising of
the waters. He had no landmarks. There was an equator somewhere, and
there were two poles, but down here beyond the reach of direct sunlight,
in this warm changeless uterine sea, neither north nor south nor east held
any meaning. He remembered other lines:

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep
Where the winds are all asleep;

Where the spent lights quiver and gleam;

Where the salt weed sways in the stream;

Where the sea-beasts rang’d all round
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground . . .

What was the next line? Something about great whales coming sailing
by, sail and sail with unshut eye, round the world for ever and aye. Yes,
but there were no great whales here, if he understood his host correctly,
no dolphins, no sharks, no minnows; there were only these swarming
lower creatures, mysteriously raised on high, lords of the world. And
mankind? Birds and bats, horses and bears? Gone. Gone. And the valleys
and meadows? The lakes and streams? Taken by the sea. The world lay
before him like a land of dreams, transformed. But was it, as the poet had
said, a place which hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor
certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain? It did not seem that way. For light
there was merely that diffuse f^aint glow, so obscure it was close to
nonexistent, that filtered down through unknown fathoms. But what was
that lobster-song, that ever-swelling crescendo, if not some hymn to love
and certitude and peace, and help for pain? He was overwhelmed by
peace, surprised by joy, and he did not understand what was happening to
him. He was part of the march, that was all. He was a member of the
pilgrimage.

He had wanted to know if there was any way he could signal to be
pulled back home: a panic button, so to speak. Bleier was the one he
asked, and the question seemed to drive the man into an agony of
uneasiness. He scowled, he tugged at his jowls, he ran his hands through
his sparse strands of hair.

“No,” he said finally. “We weren’t able to solve that one, Jim. There’s
simply no way of propagating a signal backward in time.”

“I didn’t think so,” McCulloch said. “I just wondered.”

Homefaring 1 37

“Since we’re not actually sending your physical body, you shouldn’t
find yourself in any real trouble. Psychic discomfort, at the worst —
disorientation, emotional upheaval, at the worst a sort of terminal home-
sickness. But I think you’re strong enough to pull your way through any
of that. And you’ll always know that we’re going to be yanking you back to
us at the end of the experiment.”

“How long am I going to be gone?”

“Elapsed time will be virtually nil. We’Jl throw the switch, off you’ll
go, you’ll do your jaunt, we’ll grab you back, and it’ll seem like no time at
all, perhaps a thousandth of a second. We aren’t going to believe that you
went anywhere at all, until you start telling us about it.”

McCulloch sensed that Bleier was being deliberately evasive, not for
the first time since McCulloch had been selected as the time-traveler.
“It’ll seem like no time at all to the people watching in the lab,” he said.
“But what about for me?”

“Well, of course for you it’ll be a little different, because you’ll have
had a subjective experience in another time-frame.”

“That’s what I’m getting at. How long are you planning to leave me in
the future? An hour? A week?”

“That’s really hard to determine, Jim.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know, we’ve sent only rabbits and stuff. They’ve come back
okay, beyond much doubt — ”

“Sure. They still munch on lettuce when they’re hungry, and they
don’t tie their ears together in knots before they hop. So I suppose they’re
none the worse for wear.”

“Obviously we can’t get much of a report from a rabbit.”

“Obviously.”

“You’re sounding awfully goddamned hostile today, Jim. Are you sure
you don’t want us to scrub the mission and start training another volun-
teer?” Bleier asked.

“I’m just trying to elicit a little hard info,” McCulloch said. “I’m not
trying to back out. And if I sound hostile, it’s only because you’re dancing
all around my questions, which is becoming a considerable pain in the
ass.”

Bleier looked squarely at him and glowered. “All right. I’ll tell you
anything you want to know that I’m capable of answering. Which is what
I think I’ve been doing all along. When the rabbits come back, we test
them and we observe no physiological changes, no trace of ill effeas as a
result of having separated the psyche from the body for the duration of a
time-jaunt. Christ, we can’t even tell the rabbits have been on a time-
jaunt, except that our instruments indicate the right sort of thermody-
namic drain and entropic reversal, and for all we know we’re kidding
ourselves about that, which is why we’re risking our reputations and your

138 AMAZING

neck to send a human being who can tell us what the heck happens when
we throw the switch. But you’ve seen the rabbits jaunting. You know as
well as I do that they come back okay.”

Patiently McCulloch said, “Yes. As okay as a rabbit ever is, I guess.
But what I’m trying to find out from you, and what you seem unwilling to
tell me, is how long I’m going to be up there in subjective time.”

“We don’t know, Jim,” Bleier said.

“You don’t know? What if it’s ten years? What if it’s a thousand? What
if I’m going to live out an entire life-span, or whatever is considered a
life-span a hundred years from now, and grow old and wise and wither
away and die and then wake up a thousandth of a second later on your lab
table?”

“We don’t know. That’s why we have to send a human subject.”

“There’s no way to measure subjective jaunt-time?”

“Our instruments are here. They aren’t there. You’re the only instru-
ment we’ll have there. For all we know, we’re sending you off for a million
years, and when you come back here you’ll have turned into something
out of H. G. Wells. Is that straightforward enough for you, Jim? But I
don’t think it’s going to happen that way, and Mortenson doesn’t think so
either, or Ybarra for that matter. What we think is that you’ll spend
something between a day and a couple of months in the future, with the
outside possibility of a year. And when we give you the hook, you’ll be
back here with virtually nil elapsed time. But to answer your first ques-
tion again, there’s no way you can instruct us to yank you back. You’ll just
have to sweat it out, however long it may be. I thought you knew that. The
hook, when it comes, will be virtually automatic, a function of the
thermodynamic homeostasis, like the recoil of a gun. An equal and
opposite reaction: or maybe more like the snapping back of a rubber
band. Pick whatever metaphor you want. But if you don’t like the way any
of this sounds, it’s not too late for you to back out, and nobody will say a
word against you. It’s never too late to back out. Remember that, Jim.”

McCulloch shrugged. “Thanks for leveling with me. I appreciate that.
And no, I don’t want to drop out. The only thing I wonder about is
whether my stay in the future is going to seem too long or too goddamned
short. But I won’t know that until I get there, will I? And then the time I
have to wait before coming home is going to be entirely out of my hands.
And out of yours too, is how it seems. But that’s all right. I’ll take my
chances. I just wondered what I’d do if I got there and found that I didn’t
much like it there.”

“My bet is that you’ll have the opposite problem,” said Bleier. “You’ll
like it so much you won’t want to come back.”

Again and again, while the pilgrims traveled onward, McCulloch
deteaed bright flares of intelligence gleaming like brilliant pinpoints of

Homefaring 139

light in the darkness of the sea. Each creature seemed to have a character-
istic emanation, a glow of neural energy. The simple ones — worms,
urchins, starfish, sponges — emitted dim gentle signals; but there were
others as dazzling as beacons. The lobster-folk were not the only sentient
life-forms down here.

Occasionally he saw, as he had in the early muddled moments of the
jaunt, isolated colonies of the giant sea anemones: great flowery-looking
things, rising on thick pedestals. From them came a soft alluring lustful
purr, a siren crooning calculated to bring unwary animals within reach of
their swaying tentacles and the eager mouths hidden within the fleshy
petals. Cemented to the floor on their swaying stalks, they seemed like
somber philosophers, lost in the intervals between meals in deep reflec-
tions on the purpose of the cosmos. McCulloch longed to pause and try to
speak with them, for their powerful emanation appeared plainly to indi-
cate that they possessed a strong intelligence, but the lobsters moved past
the anemones without halting.

The squid-like beings that frequently passed in flotillas overhead
seemed even keener of mind: large animals, sleek and arrogant of motion,
with long turquoise bodies that terminated in hawser-like arms, and
enormous bulging eyes of a startling scarlet color. He found them ugly
and repugnant, and did not quite know why. Perhaps it was some attitude
of his host’s that carried ovfer subliminally to him; for there was an
unmistakable chill among the lobsters whenever the squids appeared, and
the chanting of the marchers grew more vehement, as though betokening
a warning.

That some kind of frosty detente existed between the two kinds of
life-forms was apparent from the regard they showed one another and
from the distances they maintained. Never did the squids descend into
the ocean-floor zone that was the chief domain of the lobsters, but for
long spans of time they would soar above, in a kind of patient aerial
surveillance, while the lobsters^ striving ostentatiously to ignore them,
betrayed discomfort by quickened movements of their antennae.

Still other kinds of high-order intelligence manifested themselves as
the pilgrimage proceeded. In a zone of hard and rocky terrain McCulloch
felt a new and distinctive mental pulsation, coming from some creature
that he must not have encountered before. But he saw nothing unusual:
merely a rough grayish landscape pockmarked by dense clumps of oysters
and barnacles, some shaggy outcroppings of sponges and yellow sea-
weeds, a couple of torpid anemones. Yet out of the midst of all that
unremarkable clutter came clear strong signals, produced by minds of
considerable force. Whose? Not the oysters and barnacles, surely. The
mystery intensified as the lobsters, without pausing in their march,
interrupted their chant to utter words of greeting, and had greetings in
return, drifting toward them from that tangle of marine underbrush.

140 AMAZING

“Why do you march?” the unseen speakers asked, in a voice that rose in
the water like a deep slow groaning.

“We have had an Omen,” answered the lobsters.

“Ah, is it the Time?”

“The Time will surely be here,” the lobsters replied.

“Where is the herald, then?”

“The herald is within me,” said McCulloch’s host, breaking its long
silence at last.

— To whom do you speak? McCulloch asked.

— Can you not see? There. Before us.

McCulloch saw only algae, barnacles, sponges, oysters.

— Where?

— In a moment you will see, said the host.

The column of pilgrims had continued all the while to move forward,
until now it was within the thick groves of seaweed. And now McCulloch
saw who the other speakers were. Huge crabs were crouched at the bases
of many of the larger rock formations, creatures far greater in size than the
largest of the lobsters; but they were camouflaged so well that they were
virtually invisible except at the closest range. On their broad arching
backs whole gardens grew: brilliantly colored sponges, algae in somber
reds and browns, fluffy many-branched crimson things, odd complex
feathery growths, even a small anemone or two, all jammed together in
such profusion that nothing of the underlying crab showed except beady
long-stalked eyes and glinting claws. Why beings that signalled their
presence with potent telepathic outputs should choose to cloak them-
selves in such elaborate concealments, McCulloch could not guess: per-
haps it was to deceive a prey so simple that it was unable to detect the
emanations of these crabs’ minds.

As the lobsters approached, the crabs heaved themselves up a little way
from the rocky bottom, and shifted theniselves ponderously from side to
side, causing the intricate streamers and filaments and branches of the
creatures growing on them to stir and wave about. It was like a forest
agitated by a sudden hard gust of wind from the north.

“Why do you march, why do you march?” called the crabs. “Surely it
is not yet the Time. Surely!”

“Surely it is,” the lobsters replied. “So we all agree. Will you march
with us?”

“Show us your herald!” the crabs cried. “Let us see the Omen!”

— Speak to them, said McCulloch’s host.

— But what am I to say?

— The truth. What else can you say?

— I know nothing. Everything here is a mystery to me.

— 7 will explain all things afterward. Speak to them now.

— Without understanding?

Homefaring 141

— Tell them what you told us.

Baffled, McCulloch said, speaking through the host, “I have come
from the former world as an emissary. Whether I am a herald, whether I
bring an Omen, is not for me to say. In my own world I breathed air and
carried my shell within my body.”

“Unmistakably a herald,” said the lobsters.

To which the crabs replied, “That is not so unmistakable to us. We
sense a wanderer and a revenant among you. But what does that mean?
The Molting of the World is not a small thing, good friends. Shall we
march, just because this strangeness is come upon you? It is not enough
evidence. And to march is not a small thing either, at least for us.”

“We have chosen to march,” the lobsters said, and indeed they had not
halted at all throughout this colloquy; the vanguard of their procession
was far out of sight in a black-walled canyon, and McCulloch’s host,,still
at the end of the line, was passing now through the last few crouching-
places of the great crabs. “If you mean to join us, come now.”

From the crabs came a heavy outpouring of regret. “Alas, alas, we are
large, we are slow, the way is long, the path is dangerous.”

“Then we will leave you.”

“If it is the Time, we know that you will perform the offices on our
behalf. If it is not the Time, it is just as well that we do not make the
pilgrimage. We are — not — certain. We — cannot — be — sure — it — is
— an — Omen — ”

McCulloch’s host was far beyond the last of the crabs. Their words
were faint and indistinct, and the final few were lost in the gentle surgings
of the water.

— They make a great error, said McCulloch’s host to him. If it is truly
the T ime, and they do not join the march, it might happen that their souls will
bedost. That is a severe risk: but they are a lazy folk. Well, we will perform
the offices on their behalf.

And to the crabs the host called, “We will do all that is required, have
no fear!” But it was impossible, McCulloch thought, that the words could
have reached the crabs across such a distance.

He and the host now were entering the mouth of the black canyon.
With the host awake and talkative once again, McCulloch meant to seize
the moment at last to have some answers to his questions.

— Tell me now — he began.

But before he could complete the thought, he felt the sea roil and surge
about him as though he had been swept up in a monstrous wave. That
could not be, not at this depth; but yet that irresistible force, booming
toward him out of the dark canyon and catching him up, hurled him into a
chaos as diesperate as that of his moment of arrival. He sought to cling, to
grasp, but there was no purchase; he was loose of his moorings; he was
tossed and flung like a bubble on the winds.

142 AMAZING

— Help me! he called. What's happening to us?

— To you, friend human McCulloch. To you alone. Can I aid you?

What was that? Happening only to him? But certainly he and the

lobster both were caught in this undersea tempest, both being thrown
about, both whirled in the same maelstrom —

Faces danced around him. Charlie Bleier, pudgy, earnest-looking.
Maggie, tender-eyed, troubled. Bleier had his hand on McCulloch’s right
wrist, Maggie on the other, and they were tugging, tugging —

But he had no wrists. He was a lobster.

“Come, Jim — ”

“No! Not yet!”

“Jim — Jim — ”

“Stop — pulling — you’re hurting — ”

“Jim — ”

McCulloch struggled to free himself from their grasp. As he swung his
arms in wild circles, Maggie and Bleier, still clinging to them, went
whipping about like tethered balloons. “Let go,” he shouted. “You aren’t
here! There’s nothing for you to hold on to! You’re just hallucinations!
Let — go — !”

And then, as suddenly as they had come, they were gone.

The sea was calm. He was in his accustomed place, seated somewhere
deep within his host’s consciousness. The lobster was moving forward,
steady as ever, into the black canyon, following the long line of its
companions.

McCulloch was too stunned and dazed to attempt contaa for a long
while. Finally, when he felt some measure of composure return, he
reached his mind into his host’s:

— What happened?

— I cannot say. What did it seem like to you?

— The water grew wild and stormy. I saw faces out of the former world.
Friends of mine. They were pulling at my arms. You felt nothing?

— Nothing, said the host, except a sense of your own turmoil. We are deep
here: beyond the reach of storms.

— Evidently I 'm not.

— Perhaps your homefaring-time is coming. Your world is summoning
you.

Of course! The faces, the pulling at his arms — the plausibility of the
host’s suggestion left McCulloch trembling with dismay. Homefaring-
time! Back there in the lost and inconceivable past, they had begun
angling for him, casting their line into the vast gulf of time —

— I’m not ready, he protested . 7 've only just arrived here! I know nothing
yet! How can they call me so soon?

— Resist them, if you would remain.

Homefaring 143

— Will you help me?

— How would that be possible?

— I’m not sure, McCulloch said. But it’s too early for me to go back. If
they pull on me again, hold me! Can you?

— I can try, friend human McCulloch.

— And you have to keep your promise to me now.

— What promise is that?

— You said you would explain things to me. Why you’ve undertaken this
pilgrimage. What it is I’m supposed to be the Omen of. What happens when
the Time comes. The Molting of the World.

— Ah, said the host.

But that was all it said. In silence it scrabbled with busy legs over a
sharply creviced terrain. McCulloch felt a fierce impatience growing in
him. What if they yanked him again, now, and this time they succeeded?
There was so much yet to learn! But he hesitated to prod the host again,
feeling abashed. Long moments passed. Two more squids appeared: the
radiance of their probing minds was like twin searchlights overhead. The
ocean floor sloped downward gradually but perceptibly here. The squids
vanished, and another of the predatory big-mouthed swimming-things,
looking as immense as a whale and, McCulloch supposed, filling the same
ecological niche, came cruising down into the level where the lobsters
marched, considered their numbers in what appeared to be some sur-
prise, and swam slowly upward again and out of sight. Something else of
great size, flapping enormous wings somewhat like those of a stingray but
clearly just a boneless mass of chitin-strutted flesh, appeared next,
surveyed the pilgrims with equally bland curiosity, and flew to the front
of the line of lobsters, where McCulloch lost itin the darkness. While all
of this was happening the host was quiet and inaccessible, and McCulloch
did not dare attempt to penetrate its privacy. But then, as the pilgrims
were moving through a region where huge, dim-witted scallops with
great bright eyes nestled everywhere, waving gaudy pink and blue man-
tles, the host unexpectedly resumed the conversation as though there had
been no interruption, saying:

— What we call the T ime of the Molting of the World is the time when the
world undergoes a change of nature, and is purified and reborn. At such a
time, we journey to the place of dry land, and perform certain holy rites.

— And these rites bring about the Molting of the World? McCulloch
asked.

— Not at all. The Molting is an event wholly beyond our control. The rites
are performed for our own sakes, not for the world’s.

— I’m not sure I understand.

— We wish to survive the Molting, to travel onward into the world to
come. For this reason, at a Time of Molting, we must make our observances,
we must demonstrate our worth. It is the responsibility of my people. We bear

144 AMAZING

the duty for all the peoples of the world.

— A priestly caste, is that it? McCulloch said. When this cataclysm
comes, the lobsters go forth to say the prayers for everyone, so that everyone ’s
soul will survive?

The host was silent again: pondering McCulloch’s terms, perhaps,
translating them into more appropriate equivalents. Eventually it replied:

— That is essentially correct.

— But other peoples can join the pilgrimage if they want. Those crabs. The
anemones. The squids, even?

— We invite all to come. But we do not expect anyone but ourselves
actually to do it.

— How often has there been such a ceremony? McCulloch asked.

— I cannot say. Never, perhaps.

— Never?

— The Molting of the World is not a common event. We think it has
happened only twice since the beginning of time.

In amazement McCulloch said:

— Twice since the world began, and you think it ’s going to happen again in
your own lifetimes?

— Of course we cannot be sure of that. But we have had an Omen, or so we
think, and we must abide by that. It was foretold that when the end is near, an
emissary from the former world would come among us. And so it has come to
pass. Is that not so?

— Indeed.

— Then we must make the pilgrimage, for if you have not brought the
Omen we have merely wasted some effort, but if you are the true herald we
will have forfeited all of eternity if we let your message go unheeded.

It sounded eerily familiar to McCulloch: a messianic prophecy, a cult
of the millennium, an apocalyptic transfiguration. He felt for a moment as
though he had landed in the ninth century instead of in some impossibly
remote future epoch. And yet the host’s tone was so calm and rational, the
sense of spiritual obligation that the lobster conveyed was so profound,
that McCulloch found nothing absurd in these beliefs. Perhaps the world
did end from time to time, and the performing of certain rituals did in fact
permit its inhabitants to transfer their souls onward into whatever un-
imaginable environment was to succeed the present one. Perhaps.

— Tell me, said McCulloch. What were the former worlds like, and what
will the next one be?

— You should know more about the former worlds than I, friend human
McCulloch. And as for the world to come, we may only speculate.

— But what are your traditions about those worlds?

— The first world, the lobster said, was a world of fire.

— You can understand fire, living in the sea?

— We have heard tales of it from those who have been to the dry place.

Homefaring 145

Above the water there is air, and in the air there hangs a ball of fire, which
gives the world warmth. Is this not the case?

McCulloch, hearing a creature of the ocean floor speak of things so far
beyond its scope and comprehension, felt a warm burst of delight and
admiration.

— Yes! We call that ball of fire the sun.

— Ah, so that is what you mean, when you think of the sun! The word was
a mystery to me, when first you used it. But I understand you much better
now, do you not agree?

— You amaze me.

— The first world, so we think, was fire: it was like the sun. And when we
dwelled upon that world, we were fire also. It is the fire that we carry within
us to this day, that glow, that brightness, which is our life, and which goes
from us when we die. A fter a span of time so long that we could never describe
its length, the T ime of the Molting came upon the fire-world and it grew hard,
and gathered a cloak of air about itself, and creatures lived upon the land and
breathed the air. I find that harder to comprehend, in truth, than I do the
fire-world. But that was the first Molting, when the air-world emerged: that
zvorldfrom which you have come to us. I hope you will tell me of your zeorld,
friend human McCulloch, when there is time.

— Sol will, said McCulloch. But there is so much more I need to hear
from you first!

— Ask it.

— The second Molting — the disappearance of my world, the coming of
yours —

— The tradition is that the sea existed, even in the former world, and that
it was not small. A t the T ime of the M olting it rose and devoured the land and
all that was upon it, except for one place that was not devoured, which is
sacred. A nd then all the world was covered by water, and that was the second
Molting, which brought forth the third world.

— How long ago was that?

— How can I speak of the passing of time? There is no way to speak of that.
Time passes, and lives end, and worlds are transformed. But we have no
words for that. If every grain of sand in the sea were one lifetime, then it
would be as many lifetimes ago as there are grains of sand in the sea. But does
that help you? Does that tell you anything? It happened. It was very long ago.
And now our world’s turn has come, or so we think.

— And the next world? What will that be like? McCulloch asked.

— There are those who claim to know such things, but I am not one of them.
We will know the next world when we have entered it, and I am content to
wait until then for the knowledge.

McCulloch had a sense then that the host had wearied of this sustained
contact, and was withdrawing once again from it; and, though his own

146 AMAZING

thirst for knowledge was far from sated, he chose once again not to
attempt to resist that withdrawal.

All this while the pilgrims had continued down a gentle incline into the
great bowl of a sunken valley. Once again now the ocean floor was level,
but the water was notably deeper here, and the diffused light from above
was so dim that only the most rugged of algae could grow, making the
landscape bleak and sparse. There were no sponges here, and little coral,
and the anemones were pale and small, giving little sign of the potent
intelligence that infused their larger cousins in the shallower zones of the
sea.

But there were other creatures at this level that McCulloch had not
seen before. Platoons of alert, mobile oysters skipped over the bottom,
leaping in agile bounds on columns of water that they squirted like jets
from tubes in their dark green mantles; now and again they paused in
mid-leap and their shells quickly opened and closed, snapping shut, no
doubt, on some hapless larval thing of the plankton too small for
McCulloch, via the lobster’s imperfect vision, to detect. From these
oysters came bright darting blurts of mental aaivity, sharp and probing:
they must be as intelligent, he thought, as cats or dogs. Yet from time to
time a lobster, swooping with an astonishingly swift claw, would seize one
of these oysters and deftly, almost instantaneously, shuck and devour it.
Appetite was no respecter of intelligence in this world of needful carni-
vores, McCulloch realized.

Intelligent, too, in their way, were the hordes of nearly invisible little
crustaceans — shrimp of some sort, he imagined — that danced in
shining clouds just above the line of march. They were ghostly things
perhaps an inch long, virtually transparent, colorless, lovely, graceful.
Their heads bore two huge glistening black eyes; their intestines, glowing
coils running the length of their bodies, were tinged with green; the tips of
their tails were an elegant crimson. They swam with the aid of a horde of
busy finlike legs, and seemed almost to be mocking their stolid, plodding
cousins as they marched; but these sparkling little creatures also occa-
sionally fell victim to the lobsters’ inexorable claws, and each time it was
like the extinguishing of a tiny brilliant candle.

An emanation of intelligence of a different sort came from bulky
animals that McCulloch noticed roaming through the gravelly foothills
flanking the line of march. These seemed at first glance to be another sort
of lobster, larger even than McCulloch’s companions; heavily armored
things with many-segmented abdomens and thick paddle-shaped arms.
But then, as one of them drew nearer, McCulloch saw the curved tapering
tail with its sinister spike, and realized he was in the presence of the
scorpions of the sea.

They gave off a deep, almost somnolent mental wave; slow thinkers but
not light ones, Teutonic ponderers, grapplers with the abstruse. There

Homefaring 147

were perhaps two dozen of them, who advanced upon the pilgrims and in
quick one-sided struggles pounced, stung, slew. McCulloch watched in
amazement as each of the scorpions dragged away a victim and, no more
than a dozen feet from the line of march, began to gouge into its armor to
draw forth tender chunks of pale flesh, without drawing the slightest
response from the impassive, steadily marching column of lobsters.

They had not been so complacent when the great-mouthed swimming
thing had menaced McCulloch’s host; then, the lobsters had come in
hordes to tear the attacker apart. And whenever one of the big squids
came by, the edgy hostility of the lobsters, their willingness to do battle if
necessary, was manifest. But they seemed indifferent to the scorpions.
The lobsters accepted their onslaught as placidly as though it were merely
a toll they must pay in order to pass through this district. Perhaps it was.
McCulloch was only beginning to perceive how dense and intricate a
fabric of ritual bound this submarine world together.

The lobsters marched onward, chanting in unfailing rhythm as though
nothing untoward had happened. The scorpions, their hungers evidently
gratified, withdrew and congregated a short distance off, watching with-
out much show of interest as the procession went by them. By the time
McCulloch’s host, bringing up the rear, had gone past the scorpions, they
were fighting among themselves in a lazy, half-hearted way, like playful
lions after a successful hunt. Their mental emanation, sluggishly boom-
ing through the water, grew steadily more blurred, more vague, more
toneless.

And then it was overlaid and entirely masked by the pulsation of some
new and awesome kind of mind ahead: one of enormous power, whose
output beat upon the water with what was almost a physical force, like
some massive metal chain being lashed against the surface of the ocean.
Apparently the source of this gigantic output still lay at a considerable
distance, for, strong as it was, it grew stronger still as the lobsters
advanced toward it, until at last it was an overwhelming clangor, terrify-
ing, bewildering. McCulloch could no longer remain quiescent under the
impact of that monstrous sound. Breaking through to the sanauary of his
host, he cried:

— What is it?

— We are approaching a god, the lobster replied.

— A god, did you say?

— A divine presence, yes. Did you think we were the rulers of this world?

In fact McCulloch had, assuming automatically that his time-jaunt had

deposited him within the consciousness of some member of this world’s
highest species, just as he would have expected to have landed, had he
reached the twenty-second century as intended, in the consciousness of a
human rather than in a frog or a horse. But obviously the division
between humanity and all sub-sentient species in his own world did not

148 AMAZING

have an exact parallel here; many races, perhaps all of them, had some sort
of intelligence, and it was becoming clear that the lobsters, though a high
life-form, were not the highest. He found that dismaying and even
humbling; for the lobsters seemed quite adequately intelligent to him,
quite the equals — for all his early condescension to them — of mankind
itself. And now he was to meet one of their gods? How great a mind was a
god likely to have?

The booming of that mind grew unbearably intense, nor was there any
way to hide from it. McCulloch visualized himself doubled over in pain,
pressing his hands to his ears, an image that drew a quizzical shaft of
thought from his host. Still the lobsters pressed forward, but even they
were responding now to the waves of mental energy that rippled outward
from that unimaginable source. They had at last broken ranks, and were
fanning out horizontally on the broad dark plain of the ocean floor, as
though deploying themselves before a place of worship. Where was the
god? McCulloch, striving with difficulty to see in this nearly lightless
place, thought he made out some vast shape ahead, some dark entity,
swollen and fearsome, that rose like a colossal boulder in the midst of the
suddenly diminutive-looking lobsters. He saw eyes like bright yellow
platters, gleaming furiously; he saw a huge frightful beak; he saw what he
thought at first to be a nest of writhing serpents, and then realized to be
tentacles, dozens of them, coiling and uncoiling with a terrible restless
energy. To the host he said:

— Is that your god?

But he could not hear the reply, for an agonizing new force suddenly
buffeted him, one even more powerful than that which was emanating
from the giant creature that sat before him. It ripped upward through his
soul like a spike. It cast him forth, and he tumbled over and over, helpless
in some incomprehensible limbo, where nevertheless he could still hear
the faint distant voice of his lobster host:

— Friend human McCulloch? Friend human McCulloch?

He was drowning. He had waded incautiously into the surf, deceived
by the beauty of the transparent tropical water and the shimmering white
sand below, and a wave had caught him and knocked him to his knees, and
the next wave had come before he could arise, pulling him under. And
now he tossed like a discarded doll in the suddenly turbulent sea, strug-
gling to get his head above water and failing, failing, failing.

Maggie was standing on the shore, calling in panic to him, and some-
how he could hear her words even through the tumult of the crashing
waves: “This way, Jim, swim toward me! Oh, please, Jim, this way, this
way!”

Bleier was there too, Mortenson, Bob Rodrigues, the whole group, ten
or fifteen people, running about worriedly, beckoning to him, calling his

Homefaring 149

name. It was odd that he could see them, if he was underwater. And he
could hear them so clearly, too, Bleier telling him to stand up and walk
ashore, the water wasn’t deep at all, and Rodrigues saying to come in on
hands and knees if he couldn’t manage to get up, and Ybarra yelling that it
was getting late, that they couldn’t wait all the goddamned afternoon, that
he had been swimming long enough. McCulloch wondered why they
didn’t come after him, if they were so eager to get him to shore. Obviously
he was unable to help himself

“Look,” he said, “I’m drowning, can’t you see? Throw me a line, for
Christ’s sake!” Water rushed into his mouth as he spoke. It filled his
lungs, it pressed against his brain.

“We can’t hear you, Jim!”

“Throw me a line!” he cried again, and felt the torrents pouring
through his body. “I’m — drowning — drowning — ”

And then he realized that he did not at all want them to rescue him, that
it was worse to be rescued than to drown. He did not understand why he
felt that way, but he made no attempt to question the feeling. All that
concerned him now was preventing those people on the shore, those
humans, from seizing him and taking him from the water. They were
rushing about, assembling some kind of machine to pull him in, an arm at
the end of a great boom. McCulloch signalled to them to leave him alone.

“I’m okay,” he called. “I’m not drowning after all! I’m fine right
where I am!”

But now they had their machine in operation, and its long metal arm
was reaching out over the water toward him. He turned and dived, and
swam as hard as he could away from the shore, but it was no use; the boom
seemed to extend over an infinite distance, and no matter how fast he
swam the boom moved faster, so that it hovered just above him now, and
from its tip some sort of hook was descending —

“No — no — let me be! I don’t want to go ashore!”

Then he felt a hand on his wrist: firm, reassuring, taking control. All
right, he thought. They’ve caught me after all, they’re going to pull me in.
There’s nothing I can do about it. They have me, and that’s all there is to
it. But he realized, after a moment, that he was heading not toward shore
but out to sea, beyond the waves, into the calm warm depths. And the
hand that was on his wrist was not a hand; it was a tentacle, thick as heavy
cable, a strong sturdy tentacle lined on one side by rounded suction cups
that held him in an unbreakable grip.

That was all right. Anything to be away from that wild crashing surf It
was much more peaceful out here. He could rest, catch his breath, get his
equilibrium. And all the while that powerful tentacle towed him steadily
seaward. He could still hear the voices of his friends on shore, but they
were as faint as the cries of distant sea-birds now, and when he looked
back he saw only tiny dots, like excited ants, moving along the beach.

150 AMAZING

McCulloch waved at them. “See you some other time,” he called. “I
didn’t want to come out of the water yet anyway.” Better here. Much
much better. Peaceful. Warm. Like the womb. And that tentacle around
his wrist: So reassuring, so steady.

— Friend human McCulloch? Friend human McCulloch?

— This is where I belong. Isn't it?

— Yes. This is where you belong. You are one of us, friend human
McCulloch. You are one of us.

Gradually the turbulence subsided, and he found himself regaining his
balance. He was still within the lobster; the whole horde of lobsters was
gathered around him, thousands upon thousands of them, a gentle solic-
itous community; and right in front of him was the largest octopus
imaginable, a creature that must have been fifteen or twenty feet in
diameter, with tentacles that extended an implausible distance on all
sides. Somehow he did not find the sight frightening.

“He is recovered now,” his host announced.

— What happened to me? McCulloch asked.

— Your people called you again. But you did not want to make your
homefaring, and you resisted them. And when we understood that you wanted
to remain, the god aided you, and you broke free of their pull.

— The god?

His host indicated the great octopus.

— There.

It did not seem at all improbable to McCulloch now. The infinite
fullness of time brings about everything, he thought: even intelligent
lobsters, even a divine octopus. He still could feel the mighty telepathic
output of the vast creature, but though it had lost none of its power it no
longer caused him discomfort; it was like the roaring thunder of some
great waterfall, to which one becomes accustomed, and which, in time,
one begins to love. The octopus sat motionless, its immense yellow eyes
trained on McCulloch, its scarlet mantle rippling gently, its tentacles
weaving in intricate patterns. McCulloch thought of an octopus he had
once seen when he was diving in the West Indies: a small shy scuttling
thing, hurrying to slither behind a gnarled coral head. He felt chastened
and awed by this evidence of the magnifications wrought by the eons. A
hundred million years? Half a billion? The numbers were without mean-
ing. But that span of years had produced this creature. He sensed a serene
intelligence of incomprehensible depth, benign, tranquil, all-penetrating:
a god indeed. Yes. Truly a god. Why not?

The great cephalopod was partly sheltered by an overhanging wall of
rock. Clustered about it were dozens of the scorpion-things, motionless,
poised: plainly a guard force. Overhead swam a whole army of the big
squids, doubtless guardians also, and for once the presence of those

Homefaring 151

creatures did not trigger any emotion in the lobsters, as if they regarded
squids in the service of the god as acceptable ones. The scene left
McCulloch dazed with awe. He had never felt farther from home.

— The god would speak with you, said his host.

— What shall I say?

— Listen, first.

McCulloch’s lobster moved forward until it stood virtually beneath the
octopus’s huge beak. From the oaopus, then, came an outpouring of
words that McCulloch did not immediately comprehend, but which,
after a moment, he understood to be some kind of benediction that
enfolded his soul like a warm blanket. And gradually he {>erceived that he
was being spoken to.

“Can you tell us why you have come all this way, human McCulloch?’’

“It was an error. They didn’t mean to send me so far — only a hundred
years or less, that was all we were trying to cross. But it was our first
attempt. We didn’t really know what we were doing. And I suppose I
wound up halfway across time — a hundred million years, two hundred,
maybe a billion — who knows?’’

“It is a great distance. Do you feel no fear?”

“At the beginning I did. But not any longer. This world is alien to me,
but not frightening.”

“Do you prefer it to your own?”

“I don’t understand,” McCulloch said.

“Your people summoned you. You refused to go. You appealed to us
for aid, and we aided you in resisting your homecalling, because it was
what you seemed to require from us.”

“I’m — not ready to go home yet,” he said. “There’s so much I haven’t
seen yet, and that I want to see. I want to see everything. I’ll never have an
opportunity like this again. Perhaps no one ever will. Besides, I have
services to perform here. I’m the herald; I bring the Omen; I’m part of
this pilgrimage. I think I ought to stay until the rites have been per-
formed. I want to stay until then.”

“Those rites will not be performed,” said the octopus quietly.

“Not performed?”

“You are not the herald. You carry no Omen. The Time is not at
hand.”

McCulloch did not know what to reply. Confusion swirled within him.
No Omen? Not the Time?

— It is so, said the host. We were in error. The god has shown us that we
came to our conclusion too quickly. TheT ime of the Molting may be near, but
it is not yet upon us. You have many of the outer signs of a herald, but there is
no Omen upon you. You are merely a visitor. An accident.

McCulloch was assailed by a startlingly keen pang of disappointment.
It was absurd; but for a time he had been the central figure in some

152 AMAZING

apocalyptic ritual of immense significance, or at least had been thought to
be, and all that suddenly was gone from him, and he felt strangely
diminished, irrelevant, bereft of his bewildering grandeur. A visitor. An
accident.

— In that case I feel great shame and sorrow, he said. To have caused so
much trouble for you. To have sent you off on this pointless pilgrimage.

— No blame attaches to you, said the host. IVe acted of our free choice,
after considering the evidence.

“Nor was the pilgrimage pointless,” the octopus declared. “There are
no pointless pilgrimages. And this one will continue.”

“But if there’s no Omen — if this is not the Time — ”

“There are other needs to consider,” replied the oaopus, “and other
observances to carry out. We must visit the dry place ourselves, from time
to time, so that we may prepare ourselves for the world that is to succeed
ours, for it will be very different from ours. It is time now for such a visit,
and well past time. And also we must bring you to the dry place, for only
there can we properly make you one of us.”

“I don’t understand,” said McCulloch.

“You have asked to stay among us; and if you stay, you must become
one of us, for your sake, and for ours. And that can best be done at the dry
place. It is not necessary that you understand that now, human
McCulloch.”

— Make no further reply, said McCulloch’s host. The god has spoken.
We must proceed.

Shortly the lobsters resumed their march, chanting as before, though
in a more subdued way, and, so it seemed to McCulloch, singing a
different melody. From the context of his conversation with it,
McCulloch had supposed that the octopus now would accompany them,
which puzzled him, for the huge unwieldy creature did not seem capable
of any extensive journey. That proved to be the case: the octopus did not
go along, though the vast booming resonances of its mental output fol-
lowed the procession for what must have been hundreds of miles.

Once more the line was a single one, with McCulloch’s host at the end
of the file. A short while after departure it said;

— I am glad, friend human McCulloch, that you chose to continue with us.
I would be sorry to lose you now.

— Do you mean that? Isn ’t it an inconvenience for you, to carry me around
inside your mind?

— I have grown quite accustomed to it. You are part of me, friend human
McCulloch. We are part of one another. A t the place of the dry land we will
celebrate our sharing of this body.

— I was lucky, said McCulloch, to have landed like this in a mind that
would make me welcome.

Homefaring 153

— Arty of us would have made you welcome, responded the host.

McCullck:h pondered that. Was it merely a courteous turn of phrase, or

did the lobster mean him to take the answer literally? Most likely the
latter; the host’s words seemed always to have only a single level of
meaning, a straightforwardly literal one. So any of the lobsters would
have taken him in uncomplainingly? Perhaps so. They appeared to be
virtually interchangeable beings, without distinctive individual personal-
ities, without names, even. The host had remained silent when
McCulloch had asked him its name, and had not seemed to understand
what kind of a label McCulloch’s own name was. So powerful was their
sense of community, then, that they must have little sense of private
identity. He had never cared much for that sort of hive-mentality, where
he had observed it in human society. But here it seemed not only
appropriate but admirable.

— How much longer will it be, McCulloch asked, before we reach the place
of dry land?

— Long.

— Can you tell me where it is?

— It is in the place where the world grows narrower, said the host.

McCulloch had realized, the moment he asked the question, that it was

meaningless: what useful answer could the lobster possibly give? The old
continents were gone and their names long forgotten. But the answer he
had received was meaningless too: where, on a round planet, is the place
where the world grows narrower? He wondered what sort of geography
the lobsters understood. If I live among them a hundred years, he
thought, I will probably just begin to comprehend what their perceptions
are like.

Where the world grows narrower. All right. Possibly the place of the dry
land was some surviving outcropping of the former world, the summit of
Mount Everest, perhaps, Kilimanjaro, whatever. Or perhaps not: per-
haps even those peaks had been ground down by time, and new ones had
arisen — one of them, at least, tall enough to rise above the universal
expanse of sea. It was folly to suppose that any shred at all of his world
remained accessible; it was all down there beneath tons of water and
millions of years of sediments, the old continents buried, hidden, rear-
ranged by time like pieces scattered about a board.

The pulsations of the octopus’s mind could no longer be felt. As the
lobsters went tirelessly onward, moving always in that lithe skipping
stride of theirs and never halting to rest or to feed, the terrain rose for a time
and then began to dip again, slightly at first and then more than slightly.
They entered into waters that were deeper and significantly darker, and
somewhat cooler as well. In this somber zone, where vision seemed all but
useless, the pilgrims grew silent for long spells for the first time, neither
chanting nor speaking to one another, and McCulloch’s host, who had

154 AMAZING

become increasingly quiet, disappeared once more into its impenetrable
inner domain and rarely emerged.

In the gloom and darkness there began to appear a strange red glow off
to the left, as though someone had left a lantern hanging midway between
the ocean floor and the surface of the sea. The lobsters, when that
mysterious light came into view, at once changed the direction of their
line of march to go veering off to the right; but at the same time they
resumed their chanting, and kept one eye trained on the glowing place as
they walked.

The water felt warmer here. A zone of unusual heat was spreading
outward from the glow. And the taste of the water, and what McCulloch
persisted in thinking of as its smell, were peculiar, with a harsh choking
salty flavor. Brimstone? Ashes?

McCulloch realized that what he was seeing was an undersea volcano,
belching forth a stream of red-hot lava that was turning the sea into a
boiling bubbling cauldron. The sight stirred him oddly. He felt that he
was looking into the pulsing ancient core of the world, the primordial
flame, the geological link that bound the otherwise vanished former
worlds to this one. There awakened in him a powerful tide of awe, and a
baffling unfocused yearning that he might have termed homesickness,
except that it was not, for he was no longer sure where his true home lay.

— Yes, said the host. It is a mountain on fire. We think it is a part of the
older of the two former worlds that has endured both of the Moltings. It is a
very sacred place.

— An object of pilgrimage? McCulloch asked.

— Only to those who wish to end their lives. The fire devours all who
approach it.

— In my world we had many such fiery mountains, McCulloch said. They
often did great destruction

— How strange your world must have been!

— It was very beautiful, said McCulloch.

— Surely. But strange. The dry land, the fire in the air — the sun, I mean
— the air-breathing creatures — yes, strange, very strange. I can scarcely
believe it really existed.

— There are times, now, when I begin to feel the same way, McCulloch
said.

The volcano receded in the distance; its warmth could no longer be felt;
the water was dark again, and cold, and growing colder, and McCulloch
could no longer detect any trace of that sulphurous aroma. It seemed to
him that they were moving now down an endless incline, where scarcely
any creatures dwelled.

And then he realized that the marchers ahead had halted, and were
drawn up in a long row as they had been when they came to the place

Homefaring 155

where the octopus held its court. Another god? No. There was only
blackness ahead.

— Where are we? he asked.

— It is the shore of the great abyss.

Indeed what lay before them looked like the Pit itself: lightless, without
landmark, an empty landscape. McCulloch understood now that they
had been marching all this while across some sunken continent’s coastal
plain, and at last they had come to — what? — the graveyard where one of
Earth’s lost oceans lay buried in ocean?

— Is it possible to continue? he asked.

— Of course, said the host. But now we must swim.

Already the lobsters before them were kicking off from shore with
vigorous strokes of their tails and vanishing into the open sea beyond. A
moment later McCulloch’s host joined them. Almost at once there was no
sense of a bottom beneath them — only a dark and infinitely deep void.
Swimming across this, McCulloch thought, is like falling through time
— an endless descent and no safety net.

The lobsters, he knew, were not true swimming creatures: like the
lobsters of his own era they were bottom-dwellers, who walked to get
where they needed to go. But they could never cross this abyss that way,
and so they were swimming now, moving steadily by flexing their huge
abdominal muscles and their tails. Was it terrifying to them to be setting
forth into a place without landmarks like this? His host remained utterly
calm, as though this were no more than an afternoon stroll.

McCulloch lost what little perception of the passage of time that he had
had. Heave, stroke, onward, heave, stroke, onward, that was all, endless
repetition. Out of the depths there occasionally came an upwelling of cold
water, like a dull, heavy river miraculously flowing upward through air,
and in that strange surging from below rose a fountain of nourishment,
tiny transparent struggling creatures and even smaller flecks of some
substance that must have been edible, for the lobsters, without missing a
stroke, sucked in all they could hold. And swam on and on. McCulloch
had a sense of being involved in a trek of epic magnitude, a once-in-many
generations thing that would be legendary long after.

Enemies roved this open sea: the free-swimming creatures that had
evolved out of God only knew which kinds of worms or slugs to become
the contemporary equivalents of sharks and whales. Now and again one of
these huge beasts dived through the horde of lobsters, harvesting it at
will. But they could eat only so much; and the survivors kept going
onward.

Until at last — months, years later? — the far shore came into view; the
ocean floor, long invisible, reared up beneath them and afforded support;
the swimmers at last put their legs down on the solid bottom, and with
something that sounded much like gratitude in their voices began once

156 AMAZING

again to chant in unison as they ascended the rising flank of a new
continent.

The first rays of the sun, when they came into view an unknown span of
time later, struck McCulloch with an astonishing, overwhelming impact.
He perceived them first as a pale greenish glow resting in the upper levels
of the sea just ahead, striking downward like illuminated wands; he did
not then know what he was seeing, but the sight engendered wonder in
him all the same; and later, when that radiance diminished and was gone
and in a short while returned, he understood that the pilgrims were
coming up out of the sea. So they had reached their goal: the still point of
the turning world, the one remaining unsubmerged scrap of the former
Earth.

— Yes, said the host. This is it.

In that same instant McCulloch felt another tug from the past: a
summons dizzying in its imperative impact. He thought he could hear
Maggie Caldwell’s voice crying across the time-winds: “Jim, Jim, come
back to us!” And Bleier, grouchy, angered, muttering, “For Christ’s
sake, McCulloch, stop holding on up there! This is getting expensive!”
Was it all his imagination, that fantasy of hands on his wrists, familiar
faces hovering before his eyes?

“Leave me alone,” he said. “I’m still not ready.”

“Will you ever be?” That was Maggie. “Jim, you’ll be marooned.
You’ll be stranded there if you don’t let us pull you back now.”

“I may be marooned already,” he said, and brushed the voices out of
his mind with surprising ease.

He returned his attention to his companions and saw that they had
halted their trek a little way short of that zone of light which now was but a
quick scramble ahead of them. Their linear formation was broken once
again. Some of the lobsters, marching blindly forward, were piling up in
confused-looking heaps in the shallows, forming mounds fifteen or
twenty lobsters deep. Many of the others had begun a bizarre convulsive
dance: a wild twitchy cavorting, rearing up on their back legs, waving
their claws about, flicking their antennae in frantic circles.

— What ’s happening? McCulloch asked his host. Is this the beginning of
a rite?

But the host did not reply. The host did not appear to be within their
shared body at all. McCulloch felt a silence far deeper than the host’s
earlier withdrawals; this seemed not a withdrawal but an evacuation,
leaving McCulloch in sole possession. That new solitude came rolling in
upon him with a crushing force. He sent forth a tentative probe, found
nothing, found less than nothing. Perhaps it’s meant to be this way, he
thought. Perhaps it was necessary for him to face this climactic initiation
unaided, unaccompanied.

Homefaring 157

Then he noticed that what he had taken to be a weird jerky dance was
actually the onset of a mass molting prodrome. Hundreds of the lobsters
had been stricken simultaneously, he realized, with that strange painful
sense of inner expansion, of volcanic upheaval and stress: that heaving
and rearing about was the first stage of the splitting of the shell.

And all of the molters were females.

Until that instant McCulloch had not been aware of any division into
sexes among the lobsters. He had barely been able to tell one from the
next; they had no individual character, no shred of uniqueness. Now,
suddenly, strangely, he knew without being told that half of his compan-
ions were females, and that they were molting now because they were
fertile only when they had shed their old armor, and that the pilgrimage to
the place of the dry land was the appropriate time to engender the young.
He had asked no questions of anyone to learn that; the knowledge was
simply within him; and, reflecting on that, he saw that the host was absent
from him because the host was wholly fused with him; he was the host,
the host was Jim McCulloch.

He approached a female, knowing precisely which one was the appro-
priate one, and sang to her, and she acknowledged his song with a song of
her own, and raised her third pair of legs to him, and let him plant his
gametes beside her oviducts. There was no apparent pleasure in it, as he
remembered pleasure from his days as a human. Yet it brought him a
subtle but unmistakable sense of fulfillment, of the completion of biologi-
cal destiny, that had a kind of orgasmic finality about it, and left him calm
and anchored at the absolute dead center of his soul: yes, truly the still
point of the turning world, he thought.

His mate moved away to begin her new Growing and the awaiting of
her motherhood. And McCulloch, unbidden, began to ascend the slope
that led to the land.

The bottom was fine sand here, soft, elegant. He barely touched it with
his legs as he raced shoreward. Before him lay a world of light, radiant,
heavenly, a bright irresistible beacon. He went on until the water, pearly-
pink and transparent, was only a foot or two deep, and the domed upper
curve of his back was reaching into the air. He felt no fear. There was no
danger in this. Serenely he went forward — the leader, now, of the trek
— and climbed out into the hot sunlight.

It was an island, low and sandy, so small that he imagined he could
cross it in a day. The sky was intensely blue and the sun, hanging close to a
noon position, looked swollen and fiery. A little grove of palm trees
clustered a few hundred yards inland, but he saw nothing else, no birds,
no insects, no animal life of any sort. Walking was difficult here — his
breath was short, his shell seemed to be too tight, his stalked eyes were
stinging in the air — but he pulled himself forward, almost to the trees.
Other male lobsters, hundreds of them, thousands of them, were follow-

158 AMAZING

ing. He felt himself linked to each of them: his people, his nation, his
community, his brothers.

Now, at that moment of completion and communion, came one more
call from the past.

There was no turbulence in it this time. No one was yanking at his
wrists, no surf boiled and heaved in his mind and threatened to dash him
on the reefs of the soul. The call was simple and clear: This is the moment of
coming back, Jim.

Was it? Had he no choice? He belonged here. These were his people.
This was where his loyalties lay.

And yet, and yet: he knew that he had been sent on a mission unique in
human history, that he had been granted a vision beyond all dreams, that
it was his duty to return and report on it. There was no ambiguity about
that. He owed it to Bleier and Maggie and Ybarra and the rest to return, to
tell them everything.

How clear it all was ! He belonged here, and he belonged there, and an
unbreakable net of loyalties and responsibilities held him to both places.
It was a perfect equilibrium; and therefore he was tranquil and at ease.
The pull was on him; he resisted nothing, for he was at last beyond all
resistance to anything. The immense sun was a drumbeat in the heavens;
the fiery warmth was a benediction; he had never known such peace.

“I must make my homefaring now,” he said, and released himself, and
let himself drift upward, light as a bubble, toward the sun.

Strange figures surrounded him, tall and narrow-bodied, with odd
fleshy faces and huge moist mouths and bulging staring eyes, and their
kind of speech was a crude hubbub of sound-waves that bashed and
battered against his sensibilities with painful intensity. “We were afraid
the signal wasn’t reaching you, Jim,” they said. “We tried again and
again, but there was no contact, nothing. And then just as we were giving
up, suddenly your eyes were opening, you were stirring, you stretched
your arms — ”

He felt air pouring into his body, and dryness all about him. It was a
struggle to understand the speech of these creatures who were bending
over him, and he hated the reek that came from their flesh and the
booming vibrations that they made with their mouths. But gradually he
found himself returning to himself, like one who has been lost in a dream
so profound that it eclipses reality for the first few moments of
wakefulness.

“How long was I gone?” he asked.

“Four minutes and eighteen seconds,” Ybarra said.

McCulloch shook his head. “Four minutes? Eighteen seconds? It was
more like forty months, to me. Longer. I don’t know how long.”

“Where did you go, Jim? What was it like?”

Homefaring 159

“Wait,” someone else said. “He’s not ready for debriefing yet. Can’t
you see, he’s about to collapse?”

McCulloch shrugged. “You sent me too far.”

“How far? Five hundred years?” Maggie asked.

“Millions,” he said.

Someone gasped.

“He’s dazed,” a voice said at his left ear.

“Millions of years,” McCulloch said in a slow, steady, determinedly
articulate voice. "'Millions. The whole earth was covered by the sea,
except for one little island. The people are lobsters. They have a society, a
culture. They worship a giant octopus.”

Maggie was crying. “Jim, oh, Jim — ”

“No. It’s true. I went on migration with them. Intelligent lobsters is
what they are. And I wanted to stay with them forever. I felt you pulling
at me, but I — didn’t — want — to — go — ”

“Give him a sedative. Doc,” Bleier said.

“You think I’m crazy? You think I’m deranged? They were lobsters,
fellows. Lobsters. ”

After he had slept and showered and changed his clothes they came to
see him again, and by that time he realized that he must have been
behaving like a lunatic in the first moments of his return, blurting out his
words, weeping, carrying on, crying out what surely had sounded like
gibberish to them. Now he was rested, he was calm, he was at home in his
own body once again.

He told them all that had befallen him, and from their faces he saw at
first that they still thought he had gone around the bend: but as he kept
speaking, quietly, straightforwardly, in rich detail, they began to
acknowledge his report in subtle little ways, asking questions about the
geography, about the ecological balance in a manner that showed him
they were not simply humoring him. And after that, as it sank in upon
them that he really had dwelled for a period of many months at the far end
of time, beyond the span of the present world, they came to look upon him
— it was unmistakable — as someone who was now wholly unlike them.
In particular he saw the cold glassy stare in Maggie Caldwell’s eyes.

Then they left him, for he was tiring again; and later Maggie came to
see him alone, and took his hand and held it between hers, which were
cold.

She said, “What do you want to do now, Jim?”

“To go back there.”

“I thought you did.”

“It’s impossible, isn’t it?” he said.

“We could try. But it couldn’t ever work. We don’t know what we’re
doing, yet, with that machine. We don’t know where we’d send you. We

160 AMAZING

might miss by a million years. By a billion.”

“That’s what I figured too.”

“But you want to go back?”

He nodded. “I can’t explain it. It was like being a member of some
Buddhist monastery, do you see? Feeling absolutely sure that this is where
you belong, that everything fits together perfectly, that you’re an integral
part of it. I’ve never felt anything like that before. I never will again.”

“I’ll talk to Bleier, Jim, about sending you back.”

“No. Don’t. I can’t possibly get there. And I don’t want to land
anywhere else. Let Ybarra take the next trip. I’ll stay here.”

“Will you be happy?”

He smiled. “I’ll do my best,” he said.

When the others understood what the problem was, they saw to it that
he went into re-entry therapy — Bleier had already foreseen something
like that, and made preparations for it — and after a while the pain went
from him, that sense of having undergone a violent separation, of having
been ripped untimely from the womb. He resumed his work in the group
and gradually recovered his mental balance and took an active part in the
second transmission, which sent a young anthropologist named Ludwig
off for two minutes and eight seconds. Ludwig did not see lobsters, to
McCulloch’s intense disappointment. He went sixty years into the future
and came back glowing with wondrous tales of atomic fusion plants.

Homefaring 161

That was too bad, McCulloch thought. But soon he decided that it was
just as well, that he preferred being the only one who had encountered the
world beyond this world, probably the only human being who ever
would.

He thought of that world with love, wondering about his mate and her
millions of larvae, about the journey of his friends back across the great
abyss, about the legends that were being spun about his visit in that
unimaginably distant epoch. Sometimes the pain of separation returned,
and Maggie found him crying in the night, and held him until he was
whole again. And eventually the pain did not return. But still he did not
forget, and in some part of his soul he longed to make his homefaring back
to his true kind, and he rarely passed a day when he did not think he could
hear the inaudible sound of delicate claws, scurrying over the sands of
silent seas. ^

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